Flowing of My Blood
by TB's LMC
Summary: Inspired by poetry from the late Rainer Maria Rilke. C.C. is spending yet another evening alone when she sees something on TV that turns her entire world upside-down...over and over and over again.
1. Extinguish Thou My Eyes

_Author's Note: In the world of the following story, Maxwell and Fran are married and Fran's pregnant; however, none of the "Niles and C.C." canon surrounding that has happened except that Niles and C.C. danced at the wedding._

_Disclaimer: I never did own them but I always had a good time playing with them. With thanks to Rainer Maria Rilke for giving us exquisite and very inspiring poetry._

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**The Flowing of My Blood**

_By Edmonton Writer_

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**Chapter 1: Extinguish Thou My Eyes**

_Extinguish Thou my eyes: I still can see Thee,  
_

"I don't get it, Nan—I mean, Mrs.—I mean, uh..."

"Miss Babcock, don't strain yourself, it's Fran, remember? Just Fran."

She cast a sidelong glance at her. "Right. Just Fran."

"Ay, can you _believe_ that hussy Olivia is goin' after Jean-Claude _again_?"

"That's what I don't get. He's a cripple, and she's got two perfectly healthy men pining away for her, why on _Earth_ would she go after Wheelie Boy?"

"Because she loves him," Fran responded as though it were the simplest answer in the world and C.C. was the densest woman in the world. She arched an eyebrow. Well, that much was true.

C.C. shook her head. "Oh, Nan—Fran, soap operas aren't real life! Just because _you're_ living As the Stomach Churns doesn't mean _everyone_ gets the fairy tale ending."

"What fairy tale?" she whined with much self-pity. "It took me _five long years_ to get him to say The Thing without taking it back, and marry me, and even after all that we barely made it back home and now I'm pregnant, of all things...ayyy, would you look at the size of my ankles?" Fran jumped up from the couch and hurried off toward the office.

Four months along and the new Mrs. Sheffield was acting like she was in Month 12. Of course, C.C. didn't know the first thing about pregnancy other than what she'd witnessed while at work in her partner's home, and secretly she wondered if she'd be handling it any better than Fran, but still.

She turned back to the soap they'd been watching and was equally mesmerized and revolted as "Olivia" slowly settled atop the lap of "Jean-Claude" as he sat paralyzed in his wheelchair. Finally she grabbed the remote and turned the TV right off, unable to stop thinking about how odd the scene felt to her. Trying to understand loving someone so deeply as to not care about physical limitations was for her like a four-year old trying to wrap their brain around nuclear fission.

Looking at her watch, C.C. realized her stomach was rumbling and thought it strange that the sounds of the Sheffields gathering for dinner in the dining room hadn't begun. 6:30pm everything stopped, and various Sheffields, Fines and Friends of Fines invariably arrived for what always turned out to be a lively, raucous meal.

Come to think of it, she didn't smell anything cooking, either. In fact, C.C. didn't hear a sound. And when you were in a house with Fran Sheffield, that in and of itself was a rarity.

The dining room was empty. The kitchen was empty. C.C. was surprised to find Maxwell's office door open and the room devoid of life. Wondering at the lack of human beings in the house, she couldn't help but snort at the litany of smart aleck remarks that came to mind around that. Now where was Niles when she needed to throw a good dart?

Rather than stand there like an idiot and wonder, C.C. decided it'd be takeout tonight. She gathered her handbag and keys and headed out the front door for her car. Even the street was quiet, she thought, as she unlocked the door. Maybe the Sheffields had gone out for dinner. It wouldn't be the first time she'd been forgotten in their newfound family unit; it didn't really affect her other than she wished they'd had the courtesy to tell her they were leaving.

That, of course, didn't explain Niles' absence, but it was possible he went along with them or even that he'd been up in his room. It wasn't like she'd checked.

Now why, she wondered, every time she started thinking about anything, did that butler somehow worm his way into her thoughts?

Didn't matter, didn't matter. She stopped and picked up Duck with Yogurt Sauce from her favourite Vietnamese restaurant. By the time she got home, her thoughts had turned to the soap opera again, and to Fran's answer to her question, which had seemed to roll so effortlessly from her tongue.

Why was that bothering her so tonight, she wondered, as she undressed and hung her pantsuit neatly in the closet. Probably because of the larger question it raised. Working with Maxwell when Nanny Fine was still Nanny Fine had become nearly impossible after he'd told the miniskirt-wearing Size 2 he loved her and hadn't taken it back.

He was giddy all the time, he was irrational, he was constantly taking off and leaving everything for her to handle. It had only gotten worse since the wedding. As a result, she put in a lot of long, hard hours and Maxwell never seemed to notice. Only one person did, and that was...oh, there she went again. That was Niles.

How many nights had he brought her a cup of tea or bottle of water as she sat at her partner's desk slaving over scripts or invoices, bookkeeping or contracts? How many times had she worked through dinner only to be brought the most savoury meals she'd ever tasted on a plate he'd made up just for her?

How many times at two or three o'clock in the morning had he shuffled into the office in his pyjamas, robe and slippers, silently offering her some fruit or other late-night snack, a glass of milk, a shot of brandy? He always seemed to have just the thing she wanted or needed, even if she hadn't identified it yet in her own mind.

It had become part of her daily routine. She was up at 7, dressed and out the door at 8, in the Sheffield house at 8:30 or 8:45 depending on traffic and there until at least 10pm, most times later than that. The funny thing was, she thought as she threw on an old pair of jeans and began fishing in her dresser for a comfy top, they never exchanged a word in those solitary moments.

During the day whenever one of the multitude of people who were constantly in and out of that house was around, they worked their same old schtick: his retort to something she'd say to someone else, her laugh and response, his evil eye and some witticism. It was an automatic thing. In fact, it was so normal it had almost become pedestrian. Nobody even commented on their repartee nowadays.

But in the still, serene atmosphere of a sleeping home, she found that words were never necessary. She supposed she should open her mouth and thank him, but generally he was in and out so quickly that she barely had time to register that he'd left something for her before he was gone again, the door clicking softly shut behind him.

Now, as she dumped her dinner onto a plate and took a can of Fresca from the fridge, she wondered why he did it. C.C. was no idiot, and neither was Niles. They both knew they didn't hate each other. In fact, they never really had, as she'd once told Fran after Niles' heart attack. She treated him the way she had always treated staff. At least initially, that was.

Mmmm, the duck tasted delicious as always, and she let the sensation cover her tongue before chewing and swallowing. Hate was a very strong word, and on more than one occasion in the early days Fran had asked her why she hated Niles so much. She always said she didn't, or made some clever comment to keep up the act. Truth was, she wasn't sure how she felt about _anyone_ in that house anymore. She worked so much there hadn't been much time _to_ think.

There was Maxwell. About as clueless as a man could be, but infinitely adorable in a childlike sort of way. Fran, who was...a Jewish girl from Queens with a voice that had the potential to break every window in the house. C.C. had to admit that on more than one occasion, Fran had actually been friendly to her. She mused that Fran probably liked everyone, or at least was friendly to everyone, not that she had any particular desire to become a good friend to her husband's business partner.

The children...well, the children and her didn't really interact all that much. When they did, it was usually at least civil, and they seemed nice enough. Although it was a bit creepy how much like Fran that little Grace had turned out. She was even wearing short skirts and imitating Fran's laugh these days, and fawning all over her pregnant nanny-turned-stepmom. She didn't know much about B, as Fran called him, other than the fact that he was a sex-hungry twit, and Maggie was practically grown up.

That left only one other occupant in the place she worked, she thought, as she let Chester have a few pieces of leftover duck. Years of therapy had gotten her to the point where she could step back and examine quite clinically how people did or did not fit into her life, but being able to do that where Niles was concerned still eluded her.

Business partner. Business partner's wife. Check and check. Kids. Check. Easy as pie. But Niles? Well, also easy. Category: family butler. Head of household, he might argue, and she snorted a laugh at that one. But while she worked at accepting the strange friend-like relationship she and Fran had begun to form, and while she was able to view Maxwell as nothing more or less than the other half of the production company, she hadn't really been able to come up with anything like that for Niles.

Would she call him a friend? Hardly. It wasn't like they had heart-to-heart chats. Come to think of it, C.C. never had those with anyone unless she was so utterly depressed she turned to Fran. Usually for advice that made little sense to her, but at times even Fran could be comforting.

Once she realized, thanks to Dr. Bort, that she didn't actually _hate_ Niles, however, the process seemed to stop. Was she _that_ ambivalent about him? Had years of being the indomitable C.C. Babcock (_abominable_, Niles would correct if he were here now and she had to laugh) removed _every_ shred of feeling from her heart? No, she reasoned. She still had feelings. She just never had the opportunity to actually _feel_.

"That's because you compartmentalize, C.C.," Dr. Bort had once told her. "You lock away whatever it is you find uncomfortable and are able to function in complete denial that the door you locked has anything behind it at all."

Denial. When she'd denied being in denial, Dr. Bort had just said, "Denial." She'd heard Fran and Val use that word a lot, too. Sometimes directed at her, but often times just in general over some acquaintance of theirs. She'd never really thought about it after that session with the head-shrinker, but now it loomed before her like one of those big cartoon bubble words that seemed to expand until it filled the room and started breaking windows.

Actually, the one big breakthrough she'd had was the exact opposite of what most would probably expect: she hadn't ever really loved Maxwell Sheffield. It had been more of an assumption thing, where she just assumed she would wind up marrying him because his wife had died and the two of them worked so closely together. And when he'd seemed uninterested, it had become a challenge for her, like any other challenge she'd taken on in her life. It wasn't ever really a matter of the heart; it was more a matter of winning, she'd learned.

Come to think of it, when she and Niles threw insults at each other, that had actually been something she'd also seen as a challenge. It was fun to see who could get the best zinger out of their mouth the fastest. It seemed a rather sick and twisted relationship, if one could've called it that, until she worked out with Dr. Bort that this was actually probably the healthiest relationship she had.

"After all," had come the monotonous explanation, "you're still at it after all these years."

Yes, but she had also been at being a workaholic for more years than she'd known Niles or Maxwell and that, the doctor had said over and over again, _wasn't_ healthy.

Hunger pangs assuaged, C.C. took her dishes and dumped them in the sink, then headed back to her love seat for yet another evening of solitude. Chester didn't count. He'd rather be with Fran anyway, like he was _her _dog or something. Usually she brought work home with her and throwing on a CD while she delved into papers had become the norm if she did happen to leave work at a reasonable hour.

But tonight, she realized, she'd left the house with nothing work-related whatsoever. Odd, she thought as she grabbed the remote control off an end table. Deciding she'd thought enough for one evening, she curled up with a pillow in her lap and flipped to the first movie she saw: _An Affair to Remember_.

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Niles was glad to have the house to himself. He'd been surprised at Miss Babcock leaving so early, but thought it must have had something to do with no dinner being served at the Sheffield home tonight. Maxwell had given him the night off, saying he was thinking of investing in doing dinner theatre, and wanted to take his family to the one he had in mind to get their opinions of it.

Funny how quiet everything was. One by one he turned lights off as he went from room to room on the main floor. Maybe he would just kick back with a good book and a snifter of brandy and relax while everyone was out. That seemed too tame for him tonight and he wondered again why Miss Babcock had left for home so early. It did take the fun out of living, that was for certain.

As he made his way into the kitchen to raid the fridge for his own evening meal, he heard an odd noise almost directly under his feet. Stopping with the fridge door halfway open, he cocked his head. There. There it was again. What on _Earth_?

Niles closed the door, ignoring the protestations from his stomach, and crossed to the basement door. As his hand touched the knob, the sound came again. Actually, it rather resembled the sound his stomach had just made, only quite a bit louder.

Flicking on the two light switches at the top of the basement stairs, he cautiously descended step by step, no longer hearing the sound, but wary all the same. He hadn't been down here in some time, and he could tell by the amount of dust on everything in sight.

Between Fran's past, Maxwell's past, and the children's pasts, there were so many boxes down here he'd lost count of them ages ago. Things that none of them could part with, but that never saw the light of day. Suddenly he thought of the one box that was his; mingled in with all the rest, it held memories near and dear to his heart, few though they were.

Forgetting what had brought him to the basement to begin with, Niles moved closer to the boiler and deftly removed three boxes, behind which were two more rows of neatly stacked ones. From those he pulled one out from under another. It was plain brown cardboard and not labelled. This was his.

He pulled a footstool over, sat down and placed his box on the floor. Opening it, the first sight to greet him was—

—the last sight he would ever see.

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C.C. found herself unable to keep the tears from rolling down her cheeks. Maybe it was just the self-analyzing mood she'd been in when she'd put this movie on, but as Terry sat there on the couch and Nickie realized who the woman in the wheelchair had been who'd bought his painting, as he ran to his love and gathered her in his arms, she suddenly understood the soap opera she'd been watching with Fran.

It all made sense for her in that moment, as though a light bulb had burned out many, many years before and had only now been replaced. Of _course_ Olivia went back to Jean-Claude. It didn't matter that he was in a wheelchair, any more than it mattered to Nickie that Terry was wheelchair-bound. C.C., although now comprehending the situation, could not fathom what it would really be like to love someone that much.

Loving someone so completely and totally that should something dreadful happen to them, it mattered not one bit? She didn't know a single soul in _her_ life who would feel that way if she ever became like Terry. There was no Nickie in her world, there never had been. Then her thoughts flipped to Olivia. A woman, with a woman's needs, who had all those other perfectly healthy men after her, and yet her love for Jean-Claude deep enough to be willing to spend the rest of her life with someone who would always need her help to do even the most basic of daily tasks.

All at once, before she could even wipe the tears from her cheeks, she felt a sharp jab of pain right between her eyes and cried out. As suddenly as it hit, however, it was gone, and she was left wondering whether she was getting a migraine or if it had only been her imagination.

But then she started feeling sick. "Bad duck," she managed to say aloud, launching herself from the love seat, barely making it to the kitchen sink before the entire Vietnamese dinner was retched from her body. Odd, she thought as her body finally stopped heaving, she'd never gotten bad food from Safran in the past.

When C.C. managed to clean up after herself and wash the last remaining bit of vomit down the drain, she resigned herself to the fact that the incident had given her a headache. The dull throbbing in between her eyes seemed to intensify with every step she took until she stumbled, nearly falling to her knees.

"What the hell's the matter with me?" she wondered aloud. Even Chester seemed worried, she noticed. He stood in front of her clearly agitated, his tail up and curved over his back, his head cocked to the side as if trying to figure out whether she was drunk again or not.

Hoping she wasn't coming down with that H1N1 that had been in the news lately, she managed to make it back to the love seat just as a breaking news bulletin bleated itself into existence on the channel she'd been watching. C.C. grabbed the remote with the intent of turning the noise box off, holding her head as she fumbled for it between the cushions, when something caught her attention.

"_...here at the home of the second most successful Broadway show producer Maxwell Sheffield, Tina. As you can see there are flames leaping from the first floor windows. Firemen are on scene and trying their best to attack this, but it seems like it's getting the best of—"_

C.C. heard no more. Before the reporter could finish his sentence, she was out the door and at the elevator, impatiently waiting as it rose to her floor.

Had the Sheffields been home when it happened?

She whipped out her cellphone as she entered the elevator, but couldn't get a signal. Fuming, she rubbed her forehead as the pain worsened and wondered if they'd forgotten to turn the vents on, because it felt really hot in this stupid elevator.

Racing to the street, she hit Speed Dial #2, Maxwell's cellphone, but maddeningly it went straight to voice mail. She didn't have Fran's stored in her phone, only the office and home numbers. Both of which, if the pictures she'd seen were accurate, would be useless to her now.

Revving up her Beemer, she ground it into gear and dialled Maxwell again. This time she left a frantic message for him to call her because his house was on fire, barely getting the words out while trying to make it through the streets of New York without hitting anything or anyone.

Oh, God, Niles. Where was Niles? Was he out on the street with the fire trucks already trying to figure out how the hell he was going to clean up the mess? She had to chuckle, but then regretted it as a stab of pain hit her right between the eyes again. She fumbled for her air conditioner knob, wondering why in the world it was so damn hot in her car on a late fall evening.

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He came to, wondering why he felt so damn hot. Where was he, anyway, and what was that odd sound? He opened his eyes, but...wait, he must not have opened them at all, because everything was still pitch black. Maybe he hadn't, and so he tried again. No, they felt like...and then he screamed.

Whatever was going on, all he knew was that his arm felt like it was on fire! He half-yelled, batting at it with his other hand and realizing in that same instant that the sound he heard _was_ fire! "Oh, my _God_!" he cried, struggling to turn over on his hands and knees.

But he found that as soon as he moved his head, a sharp, stabbing pain right between the eyes made him lose his breath. Then he began to choke on acrid smoke and tried to figure out what had happened, where he was and why the hell he couldn't _see_.

He felt something on his chest and touched it. The box. His box. He'd been in the basement, sitting down to look in his box of memories. He pushed it off his chest and felt something fall on his hand even as the movement caused the entire front of his body to scream out. His voice followed suit, clutching at what was a small 3x5 photo, crumpling it in his hand as his voice wailed in agony.

He was going to die. He knew it as surely as he knew what was in that picture in his hand. The picture he adored but didn't dare let anyone see. It didn't matter now. No one would ever know. By the time anyone found him, it would be ashes, just like he would.

The blessed oblivion of unconsciousness overtook him. In his mind's eye as the pain began to fade was one face. Mentally he reached out to her, as though he could touch her with just a thought. _Oh, C.C._...

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C.C. cried out as she got as close to the scene as the cops would let her. She threw the car into Park, holding her head in pain as she stumbled from the car. "My house!" she cried as a female officer tried pushing her back. "That's my house that's on fire!"

"Who are you?" the officer yelled above the din of sirens and water hoses at full blast.

"C.C. Babcock, I'm Maxwell Sheffield's partner, that's...oh, _God_, was anybody home?"

The woman grabbed C.C.'s arm and practically dragged her to one of the three fire captains on-scene. "Charlie, says she's Sheffield's business partner!" she yelled.

"Was anyone home?" he said loudly into her ear.

"I...not when I left!" she replied, feeling the heat of the flames even from this far back.

"What time was that?"

"Around 6:30 I think!"

"And no one was home?"

"Well, the Sheffields weren't! But...oh, my _God_, _Niles!_"

"Who's Niles?"

"The butler, he's...my...I...oh, my God, Niles!"

"Where are the Sheffields, ma'am?" The female officer had returned.

"I don't know, they left when I was in the living room, I don't know where they went, out to dinner?" C.C. was babbling. "But Niles, Niles, I don't know if he went with them, please, is anyone in there?"

"We haven't been able to enter the premises yet, ma'am, is there an outside entrance in the back?"

"Uh...yeah, yes, the terrace doors, they lead to the office, there are stairs! Uh...kitchen door!"

The captain walked away, barking into his CB. The female officer walked off to consult with two other cops and C.C. was left at the front of a fire truck just staring into the flames.

And that's when she heard it. Heard it? Did she really hear it? She _felt_ it. A scream of pure agony washed over her as though it had been uttered right in her ear. She dropped to her knees, covering her ears. She knew that voice as surely as she knew her own name.

"Niles," she whispered. The entire front of her body felt like it was on fire; her head hurt so. Her eyes were burning so much that tears rolled down her face. "CAPTAIN!"

Charlie Braghen whipped his head around mid-sentence at the gut-wrenching cry and rushed to the side of the blonde he'd just been talking to. Kneeling next to her, he wrapped an arm around her, fingers closing around both of her upper arms. "What is it?"

"He's...in there. I know it," C.C. sobbed. "The pain...he's _hurt_..."

"Who? This Niles fellow?"

"Cap'n Braghen, it's hit the roof!"

Braghen tore himself from C.C.'s side and began barking orders. The other two captains on-scene rushed to him and in the confusion, C.C. was all but forgotten. She looked up at the raging fire before her, her ice-blue eyes nearly glowing in the smoke-filled night.

"Where are you?" she whispered fiercely. "Niles, please, where are you?"

Then it was if a veil were pulled over her eyes. Or something thicker; a cloth sack of some sort. Things went black, but she was still wide awake, still conscious. She could still hear everything. She could feel the pain grow worse in her right forearm. Then her left hand started feeling cramped as though she'd been clenching it for too long.

She closed her eyes and when she reopened them, she saw a wall of flames encircling her. But she somehow knew it wasn't real, that she wasn't trapped. She blinked again and there was something else in front of her, something made of metal, but it was ripped to shreds. What could it be? Blinking away the heat that she could still feel, this time when she opened her eyes, she saw something dark at her feet.

"Niles!" she cried. This time no one heard her. "Niles, where are you?"

Another blink. This time something else. She was looking up and when she did, she saw a clear path up some wooden stairs. Double doors. "The basement! He's in the-!" But when she turned she could only see the basement. How would she ever find someone to tell where he was?

"Niles! Someone help me, please!" But it was as though she was completely alone. This time she closed her eyes tight. She squeezed them so hard and then when she opened them she was once again standing in front of Engine 3.

She didn't even think about what she did. It was like her feet had a mind of their own and carried her around the block. Faster she walked until she was jogging. Faster she jogged until she was running and then to the alley behind the row of spacious townhouses until finally reaching the back of the Sheffields'.

There they were. The double doors. "HELP ME!" C.C. called, but the older alley just wasn't wide enough for fire trucks. She could see the fire had spread to Roger Clinton's house to the one side but didn't seem to have gone the other way. Darting to the double doors, she wrenched them open and was hit by a wave of heat so thick it made her reel from the sheer intensity.

Before she could take another step, half a dozen firefighters surrounded her. "He's down there!" she cried, "Let me get him, please!"

"That's our job, ma'am," the largest of them said, gently pushing her back. "We'll find him."

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Hours had passed. Or was it minutes? She didn't know. All she knew was a blinding pain. Her vision came and went. Her body felt like it was on fire. Two paramedics had dragged her kicking and screaming to one of three ambulances back out on the street, but all she could do was feel the stabbing pain in between her eyes, and cry out Niles' name over and over again through tears that made tracks down her sooty face.

The medics realized she needed a sedative. Before long, C.C. Babcock was out like a light. Her left hand, balled into a tight, tight fist, moved one last time to her mouth before the men pulled it away to place an oxygen mask over her face.

"C.C.!"

She didn't see the frantic Sheffields arrive on-scene.

"Oh, my _God_, Max, where's _Niles_?"

Grace began to cry. Maggie held her, tears streaming down her face.

"C.C.," Max looked helplessly on as the ambulance sped away. He searched for someone who looked like they were in charge as another ambulance turned on its screeching sirens and headed down the street, turning at the first corner.

Finally a female officer approached them. "Do you know a C.C. Babcock or someone called Niles?" she asked.

"Yes! Yes!" all five family members exclaimed as one.

"Babcock is being taken to..." She consulted her notepad. "...Lenox Hill." Her radio crackled to life. She listened for a moment, then nodded to Maxwell. "And it sounds like they got your butler out," she smiled. "He's on his way to Lenox, too."

The family ran back to the Bentley and Max sped the short distance to the hospital. They poured into the Emergency Room, which in and of itself was surprisingly empty of waiting patients. "A man and a woman," Max said breathlessly, "Niles and C.C. Babcock, brought here by ambulance from a fire."

The nurse behind the desk checked her records. "Nothing in the system, sir."

"That policewoman said they were being brought here," Fran interjected. "They probably only just got here!"

"One moment."

The nurse hurried back to an area behind two large security doors.

"Oh, God, I'll never forgive myself if something's happened to Niles," Max said, leaning his butt against the high counter and leaning forward to grip his thighs.

"Sweetie, we don't know what happened."

"Yeah, for all we know," Brighton chipped in, trying to lighten the mood, "Miss Babcock may have just spontaneously combusted."

"If she had, Brighton, there wouldn't be anything to bring to the emergency room," Grace reminded him.

He rolled his eyes and looked away as one of the doors opened with a mechanical sound. The nurse returned to her post. "They've both just arrived, are you their family?"

"Yes!" the quintet chorused.

"If you'll have a seat, they're being examined right now. You'll be able to go back after that's complete."

Frustrated, the five shuffled into one corner of the waiting room looking dejected. But Fran popped back up and quietly approached the nurse. "Did you see them?" she asked. "Are they all right?"

"I honestly can't tell you. They both looked like they were unconscious when I went back there."

Fran's face crumpled and she ran to be comforted by her Maxwell. "Oh, if something happens to Niles, I'll never forgive myself."

"Now, now, darling, whatever happened can't possibly be your fault. You weren't even home!"

"I just keep thinking that if we hadn't gone out tonight, none of this would have happened."

"Actually," Grace said, her voice nearly a whisper, "if we _had_ all been home, whatever happened could have happened to _all_ of us."

"Yes, sweetheart, we're very lucky," Maxwell smiled across at her. "I can only hope Niles and C.C. were as lucky."

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C.C. rose back to the land of the living quickly. She found herself lying in a bed with curtains pulled around her. She recognized the sounds immediately. She was in a hospital. But why? What had happened?

Opening her eyes, she was startled for a moment when it still seemed dark. Then suddenly she could see. Remembering the intense pain she'd been feeling right before blacking out, she was surprised to find nothing seemed to hurt. Not her head, not her arms, nowhere on her body.

She sat up and scooted off the bed. She was still in her street clothes, she noticed, and was about to open the curtain when a man's voice wafted above the beeping noises. "He needs to be taken to MEETH," the voice said. "And I mean _stat_!"

MEETH? C.C. knew that place. It was where she'd had her LASIK surgery. The Manhattan Eye, Ear and Throat Hospital less than a dozen blocks from the house.

The house.

Oh, God, Niles.

She swept the curtain back and spotted the object of her thoughts two stalls down. A nurse was taking his pulse. The right sleeve of his shirt had been shredded up to his shoulder, his skin wrapped in white gauze. She inched closer. He must be alive, she reasoned, or they wouldn't have dressed a wound.

His right arm. She rubbed hers, remembering how it had felt on fire.

The nurse moved to type something into a nearby laptop and that's when she saw Niles from the neck up. The entire front of his face was swathed in what looked like wet bandages of some sort, including his eyes. There was a spot of blood in what appeared to be the intersection of his eyes and nose.

Instinctively she reached up to the same spot on her head and remembered the stabbing pain she'd felt there multiple times, and the throbbing headache. And how her face had felt so very hot.

"Hey, you're supposed to be in bed, ma'am," the nurse said when she'd finished typing.

"Not until I find out how he is."

The nurse nodded her head toward the prone figure. "You his wife?"

C.C. knew they'd tell her nothing unless she was a relative. "Yes. We haven't been married that long," she gushed, rushing to his side. "Please, tell me how he is."

"He's got some burns, the worst is second degree on his right arm and hand," she advised. "His face took some heat but it doesn't look any worse than first degree."

"So he's going to be okay?"

"And who is this?" a man's voice asked from behind.

"C.C. Ba—" she glanced sidelong at the nurse. "Niles. C.C. Niles," she said, holding out her hand.

"Dr. Mason," he said, shaking her hand briefly.

"I'm his wife," C.C. lied. "He just has a few burns?"

"Superficially, yes. We're a little concerned about his eyes, though."

"What? His eyes?"

C.C. recalled everything going to black, not being able to see. Then she remembered opening her eyes and being able to see a wall of fire. Reopening them to see metal in pieces. And again to see Niles on the floor. Finally, to see the basement's double-door exit to the back of the townhouse.

"Are his eyes okay?"

"We're not sure. We're sending him over to Manhattan Eye so the ophthalmologic team can assess them."

"But...what do you think is wrong?"

"It's hard to say, Mrs. Niles," the doctor replied gravely. "But I'm very concerned."

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When C.C. was finally allowed to sign discharge papers, it was well after Niles had been transported to MEETH by ambulance. She was chomping at the bit to get there. It hadn't even occurred to her why she was so hell-bent on it, but she moved through the ER waiting room so fast she didn't even hear Maggie call her name.

Running to catch up with her, Maggie yelled, "Miss _Babcock_!"

She skidded to a halt.

"I was supposed to wait for you and tell you that Daddy, Fran, Brighton and Grace went to Manhattan Eye to be with Niles."

"Thanks. I'm hailing a cab."

"But I'm supposed to see that you get home!"

"Sorry, kid, you can tell them you did your best. I'm not going anywhere until I know Niles is okay."

Throwing her hands up in exasperation, Maggie could do nothing but get into the cab C.C. had hailed, and then stare at the wild-eyed expression the woman wore the entire ride there.

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"Are you his wife?" the nurse on duty asked after C.C. demanded to see Niles.

"Yes," C.C. replied, ignoring the gasps coming from behind her. "I am, now please, I need to see him."

"He's in A and B Scanning right now," she said. "I'm sorry, but I can't let you into the testing areas. As soon as he's completed the IOP I think we'll be getting him settled into a room. Please have a seat and I'll let you know as soon as you can see him, okay?"

C.C. just nodded dumbly and went to sit in one of those chairs that were designed to look comfortable but may as well have been felled logs.

"C.C., did you just say you were Niles' _wife_?" Maxwell whispered rather loudly.

Everyone's eyes were on her. "Well of _course_ I did, Maxwell," she replied in just as loud a whisper. "They won't tell you anything if you're not family!"

"Good point," Fran stated, nodding. "They don't know anything yet, do they?" she asked sadly.

"No. They're doing some sort of...scans and some...IO—thing."

"Will they let us in to see him too or do we have to all say we're his wife?" Brighton asked in deadpan.

Maxwell just frowned at his only son before turning back to C.C. "Tell us what happened," he said softly, laying a hand over hers.

C.C. shook her head. "I don't know, Maxwell." It was all she could do to think back to when she'd left the house. It seemed like an eternity had passed since then. "I was in the living room, I turned off the TV."

"Yeah, we were watching _Manhattan Nights_ before we left for the dinner theatre," Fran chimed in.

"I suddenly realized I was all alone in the house, it seemed like everyone had left."

"I'm sorry, C.C., I thought someone had told you our plans for the evening," Maxwell said, patting her hand.

She waved him off, lost in thought. "I didn't know Niles was still there."

"I think I saw him go upstairs with a basket of laundry just as we were heading out the door," Maggie offered.

"So I figured I'd just go home. I stopped for Vietnamese on the way. I got the duck."

"And here I thought it would've been chicken," Fran said to Max in a whisper, earning a stern glare.

"I remember eating and then suddenly I got this pain in my head. Right here," she explained, pointing to the spot just above the bridge of her nose. "I didn't know what was happening, but right after that I got sick to my stomach. I barely made it to the sink."

Fran made a face.

"I was watching a movie, _An Affair to Remember_."

"Ay, I _just love_ that movie!" Grace and Fran intoned together.

Maxwell shushed them with a look and nodded at C.C. to continue.

"I don't remember, it's all so jumbled. I just...I know...wait...the movie, the duck...the news flash, that was it! I saw the fire on a news flash!"

"That's how you discovered it?"

"Yes, Maxwell, I ran out of my apartment so fast I'm not even sure I closed my door!"

"You didn't see Niles?" Fran asked.

"Well...not exactly."

By the time C.C. finished explaining the odd 'visions' she'd had that led her to Niles' location in the basement, a doctor had come into the waiting room. All six of them jumped to their feet.

"Which of you is C.C. Niles, please?"

Five pairs of eyes turned C.C.'s way, giving her varying degrees of odd looks.

"C.C. _what_?" Brighton asked.

"That's me," she said, stepping forward. "Doctor, how is he?"

"Who are they?" the doctor asked.

"They're Niles's family," she said. "Brother, wife, kids," pointing at each of them in turn.

"Yes, _Uncle_ Niles is our favourite," Brighton added dramatically.

"Doctor—"

"Gorin," the man said, shaking C.C.'s hand. "I must tell you, the preliminary tests are worrisome."

"What happened?"

"We can only tell that it appears his eyes were both damaged. There is severe enough inflammation that we won't know for certain whether it's permanent or not for at least another week."

"What's permanent?" Fran asked, clinging to Maxwell's arm and grasping C.C's hand tightly without even realizing she'd done so.

C.C. found herself squeezing back so hard it made Fran grimace as Dr. Gorin replied, "Blindness, ma'am."

"_Blindness_?"

"I'm afraid so. He hasn't regained consciousness yet, but from what I can tell, it appears that the damage he received from the fire may have cost him his eyesight."

"Oh, dear God in heaven," Maxwell breathed, sagging against Fran. "Anything but that."

"You—you mean Niles is...blind?" C.C. squeaked, squeezing Fran's hand even tighter. She didn't notice Fran twisting around in pain, trying desperately to free her fingers, her mouth in a large O as Grace rushed in to help.

"As I said, Mrs..." he cocked his head at her.

"We call each other by our last names. It's an _X-Files_ thing," she said quickly.

Dr. Gorin shook his head. There were always kooks in the City. "Mrs. Niles, the fact of the matter is, we just don't know yet. Without him being awake to answer questions, I can't be certain of anything."

"Can I see him?" she asked as Gorin turned to walk back to the desk.

"Yes, he's been made comfortable in a private room per Mr. Sheffield's...Sheffield? And you're brothers?"

"Different fathers," Fran explained, shaking her pained hand. "It's a British thing."

"Broadway producer," Brighton added, pointing proudly toward his father.

"Partner," C.C. reminded them, pointing at her own chest.

"Next thing you'll tell me is you're related to Andrew Lloyd Webber," the doctor sighed, shaking his head.

"No, but my Uncle Stanley once knew an _Andy_ Weber," Fran remarked.

"Mrs. Niles," Gorin said, ready to be rid of this odd group and ignoring the unlocatable snorts that emitted from some of them, "I'll escort you to his room. The rest of you must remain here."

"Let us know how he is, Miss Babcock," Fran said.

"Miss?" the nurse at the desk said as C.C. and Gorin disappeared down the corridor. "I thought she said she was his wife?"

"Oh," Maxwell smiled sheepishly, "well, C.C. and Niles haven't been married that long."

"Yeah, like maybe what, now, about two hours?" Brighton said, checking his watch. One sister on either side of him smacked his left and right arms simultaneously. "Ow!"

"So does someone want to explain something to me here?" Fran asked.

"Like what?"

"Oh, I don't _know_, Maxwell, like how come C.C. suddenly cares enough about Niles to pose as his wife so _she_ gets to be the one to see him?"

"It is rather odd, Daddy," Grace nodded.

"Yes, I suppose you have a point there," he replied. "You don't think she somehow thinks she _caused_ this, do you?"

"Honey, that's very sweet, but shiksas don't do guilt," Fran patted his arm gently. "There must be some other reason."

Then, as the same single thought went through both their minds, they just stared at each other for a moment.

"What?" Brighton asked, suddenly interested. "What do you two know that you're not dishing?"

"Yeah, come on, Fran, spill it," Grace ordered.

"I don't know _what_ you're talking about," Fran said, the scene from so long ago playing through her mind. Her and Max coming home from never having met Lenny, Fran still never having recovered from the shock of seeing Niles and Miss Babcock in a liplock that could've melted the entire Antarctic.

"Oh, come on, Fraaaaan," Grace whined in an all-too-familiar way.

Max sensed this long night was about to get even longer.

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C.C. followed the doctor into Niles's room. There he lay, looking not all that worse for wear save for the bandage she'd seen on his arm earlier. Now he'd been changed into a hospital gown, though. And then she looked up. She could see small blisters on his left cheek, but the bandage wrapped around his eyes was what made her breath catch.

"He's stable now, Mrs. Niles, but still unconscious. When he does wake up, he may have trouble talking. His throat is pretty scorched, but I don't believe there will be permanent damage to his vocal chords."

She nodded, moving forward to get a closer look. The rise and fall of his chest was comforting.

"Oh, one more thing before I go," Dr. Gorin added, reaching for something on a nearby tray. "He had this clutched in his hand. Took forever to loosen his grip. When I saw what it was, I thought you might want it."

She took the crumpled thing from him and as he walked out the door, she smoothed it out, realizing it was a photograph. Tears sprang to her eyes unbidden. Someone had taken it while the two of them were dancing at the wedding.

They looked happy.

She turned the photo over and in Niles's unmistakeable scrawl saw the words _Second happiest time in my life_.

Clutching it in her hand, she pulled a chair to his bed and perched on the edge. "Niles, what does this mean?" she asked. He didn't stir. "You know, I...I found you down there, in the basement. I don't know how, I was just, I—"

C.C. stopped, unable to speak past the lump in her throat. She thought back to earlier, when she'd been psychoanalyzing all the relationships in her life, and how she'd been unable to categorize the one with the man who lay unconscious before her. She looked back down at the photograph and for the first time asked herself how _he_ felt about _her_.

Whereas the rest of the time C.C. had known Maxwell's butler she'd kept him at arm's length, tonight she had reached out to him in terror. Somehow, he had guided her. She had felt his pain. She had seen the fire. She had found her way to him. Was it both literally and figuratively?

Now her hand found its way along the side of the bed to where his left arm rested beneath a blanket. C.C. wrapped her fingers around it and bowed her head. What if he _had_ lost his sight? What would that mean to him? She closed her eyes and remembered so many times looking into his, remembered the daggered stares, the smouldering embers, the small glints that would flash at her. The few times she thought she was seeing right through those eyes into something that went beyond Niles the Domestic.

To have such amazing eyes be extinguished seemed...so wrong. So unjust. "Niles," she said, swallowing hard. "Niles, I hope you can hear me."

The soap opera came back to her. The movie came back to her. He wouldn't be able to work. A blind man couldn't be a butler. Couldn't cook, couldn't clean. Couldn't do laundry or any of the hundred other things he did each day.

"Niles, if you really _have_ lost your sight, I'll still be here."

Is that what she felt? Did she feel it for him? What was she saying, but most of all, why was she saying it? She hadn't thought about it, hadn't even thought what it would mean if she kept that promise.

But in that moment, she didn't care. All she could think of was when he'd been lying so helplessly in the bed after his heart attack. How frightened she'd been of losing him, how she'd confessed to Fran she didn't hate him, how she'd made such a fool of herself in front of everyone jumping on that gurney when she thought it was Niles who'd died.

But then everything had gone back to normal. Or had it?

All the nice things he'd done for her...well, aside from the normal barbs. But then again, those were what she lived for. They were her fun. So in a way, him keeping that up _was_ doing something nice for her. They remained the same, always together yet never really close. Always in each other's way but neither trying too hard to move.

She felt his arm twitch beneath the blanket and jumped. "Niles?"

Slowly he pulled his arm out from under the blanket. There were some burns evident there, but no blisters. She lightly touched her fingertips to his skin and he flinched. "I'm sorry," she breathed, but as her hand jerked away, his moved lightning quick to grab it.

She felt his strength as his fingers felt her fingers, her palm, and finally as they enclosed hers, engulfing her hand completely. She smiled, only then realizing she'd begun to cry. "I'm here, Niles." Their hands fell to the bed, his strength seeming to wane.

He opened his mouth to speak and a croak that sounded like "Miss Babcock" emerged.

"Shhh, don't. You'll be okay."

"We," he managed to whisper.

She smiled. "We," she repeated, wondering exactly what he was talking about. But whatever it was, C.C. Babcock was prepared for the challenge. After all, challenges were what she lived for.

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Days and nights passed. Eventually fire investigators came to the Trump Place condo the Sheffields had purchased as 'temporary' housing due to the nearly complete destruction of their home. Having pulled what was almost an all-nighter with Maxwell thanks to several theatre wires getting crossed the evening before, C.C. had spent the night on the couch.

Right in the middle of Fran lamenting the loss of her high school yearbook to flames, there was a knock at the door. C.C. had just emerged from having a shower when she observed the guests and raced into the living room. "Have you found out what started it?" she asked.

"Yes, ma'am, I believe we have," the older of the two men stated as the family seated themselves. Maxwell gestured for them to sit as well but they declined with shaking heads. "We can't stay long, we just wanted to speak to you in person."

"So what was it?" Fran asked.

"The boiler."

"Boiler? Houses still have those?"

"Haven't you ever been in the basement, Brighton?"

"Are you kidding, Maggie? It's full of cobwebs!"

"Children, please!" Maxwell admonished. "The boiler?" he prompted the two men.

"Yes. We've pieced it all together…er…as it were. Apparently your butler was sitting on a stool near the boiler. It appeared perhaps looking through boxes. It exploded as he sat there."

C.C. and Fran gasped, their hands simultaneously flying to their mouths.

"My God, poor Niles," Maxwell said sadly. "There was no warning?"

"It's hard to say. We haven't yet determined why the boiler blew but apparently shrapnel flew in all directions, cutting some wires near the fuse box. That caused a spark and with all those boxes down there, it went up like a tinderbox."

The second man finally spoke up. "We've also been able to match Niles' injuries to the explosion. They extracted a piece of shrapnel from right between his eyes. It was the hot water from the boiler that actually hit him right in the face."

C.C. felt the sharp jab of pain full force, just like the night it had happened. Clutching her robe tightly with one hand, she gripped the arm of the couch so hard her knuckles turned white.

"It would appear he received some flash burns on his face, but his clothing protected his torso."

"However," the second man chimed in, "while he was lying unconscious, the fire did manage to get too close to his arm. That's why he had 2nd degree burns there."

C.C.'s right arm began feeling as though it were melting and she made a small strangled sound.

"What about his eyes?" Grace asked. "Why did his eyes get hurt?"

"Well, it's hard to say precisely what he was doing at the moment the boiler went. You'd think if he were looking through boxes, his eyes would have been downcast, but it would appear his eyes were straight at the boiler."

"Maybe it made a noise before it blew up," Fran mused quietly. "And he looked up at it?"

"Definitely a possibility, Mrs. Sheffield," the first man replied, nodding. "At any rate, the water could easily have taken his sight, so he's a very lucky man."

C.C. frowned. Had she just heard that right? Maybe the investigators didn't know about Niles' eyesight yet.

"I just don't understand how any of that could've made him go deaf," Maxwell said, a frown creasing his brow.

"Deaf?" C.C. exclaimed.

With a sidelong glance at the lady in what could barely be called a bathrobe, the second investigator replied, "From what we can tell, that explosion knocked him pretty far back. It's quite possible it was very loud, too."

"I'm sorry, folks, we have to be going. Court case in Queens," the second man said, nodding to the family.

"Yes, we're very sorry about your friend, but at least we think we can rule out foul play."

C.C. jumped to her feet, face ashen. "What did he mean about Niles' hearing?" she asked, thinking she must have simply heard him wrong.

"C.C.? What are you asking us that for? You were the one who initially found out about it, posing as his wife," Maxwell replied, rising to his feet in synch with Fran.

"Miss Babcock, you don't _look_ so good," Fran intoned.

It was just Brighton's luck that she fell on top of him when she fainted.


	2. Deprive My Ears of Sound

**Chapter 2: Deprive My Ears of Sound**

_Deprive my ears of sound: I still can hear Thee,  
_

Forgetting what had brought him to the basement to begin with, Niles moved closer to the boiler and deftly removed three boxes, behind which were two more rows of neatly stacked ones. From those he pulled one out from under another. It was plain brown cardboard and not labelled. This was his.

He pulled a footstool over, sat down and placed his box on the floor. Opening it, he pulled out a photograph right off the top that he kept hidden down here for reasons of safety. After all, he thought, chuckling, Grace had turned into quite the snooper. He was so proud of that little one.

He heard that strange sound again; the one that had brought him down there. Only this time he knew exactly where it was coming from. It got louder and louder, then stopped.

Frowning, Niles rose to his feet, photo still clutched in his left hand. When the boiler made its final high-pitched squeal, it was—

—the last sound he would ever hear.

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All at once, before she could even wipe the tears from her cheeks, she felt a sharp jab of pain right between her eyes and cried out. As suddenly as it hit, however, it was gone, and she was left wondering whether she was getting a migraine or if it had only been her imagination.

But then she started feeling sick. "Bad duck," she managed to say aloud, launching herself from the love seat, barely making it to the kitchen sink before the entire Vietnamese dinner was retched from her body. Odd, she thought as her body finally stopped heaving, she'd never gotten bad food from Safran in the past.

When C.C. managed to clean up after herself and wash the last remaining bit of vomit down the drain, she resigned herself to the fact that the incident had given her a headache. The dull throbbing in between her eyes seemed to intensify with every step she took until she stumbled, nearly falling to her knees.

"What the hell's the matter with me?" she wondered aloud. Even Chester seemed worried, she noticed. He stood in front of her clearly agitated, his tail up and curved over his back, his head cocked to the side as if trying to figure out whether she was drunk again or not.

Hoping she wasn't coming down with that H1N1 that had been in the news lately, she managed to make it back to the love seat just as a breaking news bulletin bleated itself into existence on the channel she'd been watching. C.C. grabbed the remote with the intent of turning the noise box off, holding her head as she fumbled for it between the cushions, when something caught her attention.

"_...here at the home of the second most successful Broadway show producer Maxwell Sheffield, Tina. As you can see there are flames leaping from the first floor windows. Firemen are on scene and trying their best to attack this, but it seems like it's getting the best of—"_

C.C. heard no more. Before the reporter could finish his sentence, she was out the door and at the elevator, impatiently waiting as it rose to her floor.

Had the Sheffields been home when it happened?

She whipped out her cellphone as she entered the elevator, but couldn't get a signal. Fuming, she rubbed her forehead as the pain worsened and wondered if they'd forgotten to turn the vents on, because it felt really hot in this stupid elevator.

Racing to the street, she hit Speed Dial #2, Maxwell's cellphone, but maddeningly it went straight to voice mail. She didn't have Fran's stored in her phone, only the office and home numbers. Both of which, if the pictures she'd seen were accurate, would be useless to her now.

Revving up her Beemer, she ground it into gear and dialled Maxwell again. This time she left a frantic message for him to call her because his house was on fire, barely getting the words out while trying to make it through the streets of New York without hitting anything or anyone.

Oh, God, Niles. Where was Niles? Was he out on the street with the fire trucks already trying to figure out how the hell he was going to clean up the mess? She had to chuckle, but then regretted it as a stab of pain hit her right between the eyes again. She fumbled for her air conditioner knob, wondering why in the world it was so damn hot in her car on a late fall evening.

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He came to, wondering why he felt so damn hot. Where was he, anyway, and why was it so quiet? He opened his eyes, only to be confronted by a terrifying wall of flames. He cried out…or at least, he thought he had. Maybe he hadn't after all, and yelled for help. No sound. Why could he see "_Fire_!"

Whatever was going on, all he knew was that if he didn't get out of there fast, they'd be having barbecued butler for dinner.

But he found that as soon as he moved his head, a sharp, stabbing pain right between the eyes made him lose his breath. Then he began to choke on acrid smoke and tried to figure out what had happened, where he was and why the hell he couldn't hear anything.

He felt something on his chest and touched it. The box. His box. He'd been in the basement, sitting down to look in his box of memories. He pushed it off his chest and the entire front of his body screamed out. His voice followed suit, fist automatically closing around a small 3x5 photo, crumpling it as his voice wailed in agony.

He could barely breathe from the smoke. It burned his eyes, he couldn't even open them. He was going to die. He knew it as surely as he knew what was in that picture in his hand. The picture he adored but didn't dare let anyone see. It didn't matter now. No one would ever know. By the time anyone found him, it would be ashes, just like he would.

The blessed oblivion of unconsciousness overtook him. In his mind as the pain began to fade was one voice. Mentally he reached out to her, as though he could touch her with just a thought. _Niles._...he heard her say in that derogatory tone reserved especially for him. _Niles, hear me…_

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C.C. cried out as she got as close to the scene as the cops would let her. She threw the car into Park, holding her head in pain as she stumbled from the car. "My house!" she cried as a female officer tried pushing her back. "That's my house that's on fire!"

"Who are you?" the officer yelled above the din of sirens and water hoses at full blast.

"C.C. Babcock, I'm Maxwell Sheffield's partner, that's...oh, _God_, was anybody home?"

The woman grabbed C.C.'s arm and practically dragged her to one of the three fire captains on-scene. "Charlie, says she's Sheffield's business partner!" she yelled.

"Was anyone home?" he said loudly into her ear.

"I...not when I left!" she replied, feeling the heat of the flames even from this far back.

"What time was that?"

"Around 6:30 I think!"

"And no one was home?"

"Well, the Sheffields weren't! But...oh, my _God_, _Niles!_"

"Who's Niles?"

"The butler, he's...my...I...oh, my God, Niles!"

"Where are the Sheffields, ma'am?" The female officer had returned.

"I don't know, they left when I was in the living room, I don't know where they went, out to dinner?" C.C. was babbling. "But Niles, Niles, I don't know if he went with them, please, is anyone in there?"

"We haven't been able to enter the premises yet, ma'am, is there an outside entrance in the back?"

"Uh...yeah, yes, the terrace doors, they lead to the office, there are stairs! Uh...kitchen door!"

The captain walked away, barking into his CB. The female officer walked off to consult with two other cops and C.C. was left at the front of a fire truck just staring into the flames.

And that's when she heard it. Heard it? Did she really hear it? She _felt_ it. A scream of pure agony washed over her as though it had been uttered right in her ear. She dropped to her knees, covering her ears. She knew that voice as surely as she knew her own name.

"Niles," she whispered. The entire front of her body felt like it was on fire; her head hurt so. Her eyes were burning so much that tears rolled down her face. "CAPTAIN!"

Charlie Braghen whipped his head around mid-sentence at the gut-wrenching cry and rushed to the side of the blonde he'd just been talking to. Kneeling next to her, he wrapped an arm around her, fingers closing around both of her upper arms. "What is it?"

"He's...in there. I know it," C.C. sobbed. "The pain...he's _hurt_..."

"Who? This Niles fellow?"

"Cap'n Braghen, it's hit the roof!"

Braghen tore himself from C.C.'s side and began barking orders. The other two captains on-scene rushed to him and in the confusion, C.C. was all but forgotten. She looked up at the raging fire before her, her ice-blue eyes nearly glowing in the smoke-filled night.

"Where are you?" she whispered fiercely. "Niles, please, where are you?"

Then it was if she'd covered her ears with her hands. Or something thicker; the ear plugs worn by factory workers. Things went silent, but she was still wide awake, still conscious. She could still see everything. She could feel the pain grow worse in her right forearm. Then her left hand started feeling cramped as though she'd been clenching it for too long.

She closed her eyes and when she reopened them, she could hear the crackling of flames encircling her but was nowhere near the fire. She turned her head like Chester did when he heard an odd sound and there was something else now, a terrible sound like metal being ripped to shreds. It was so loud she covered her ears. What could it be? Blinking away the heat that she could still feel, this time when she cocked her head slightly to the left, she heard a low moan.

"C.C., I hear you," the far-too-familiar voice whispered.

"Niles!" she cried. She couldn't hear her own voice. Why couldn't she hear her own voice? "Niles, where are you?"

Another slight movement of her head. This time something else. She could hear a scraping sound and then a loud creaking noise that sounded like- "The basement! He's in the-!" She still couldn't hear herself and looked around wildly, wondering why she couldn't hear the sirens anymore, why she couldn't hear the fire crackling, why there were no voices yelling.

"Niles! Someone help me, please!" But nobody paid attention; it was as though she was completely alone. She didn't even think about what she did. It was like her feet had a mind of their own and carried her around the block. Faster she walked until she was jogging. Faster she jogged until she was running and then to the alley behind the row of spacious townhouses until finally reaching the back of the Sheffields'.

There they were. The double doors, and the left one was open. "HELP ME!" C.C. called, suddenly aware that she could hear again. But the older alley just wasn't wide enough for fire trucks. She could see the fire had spread to Roger Clinton's house to the one side but didn't seem to have gone the other way. Darting to the double doors, she wrenched the right one open and was hit by a wave of heat so thick it made her reel from the sheer intensity.

Before she could take another step, half a dozen firefighters surrounded her. "Niles!" she cried, seeing a fist several steps down. "Let me get him, please!"

"That's our job, ma'am," the largest of them said, gently pushing her back. "We'll get him."

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Hours had passed. Or was it minutes? She didn't know. All she knew was a blinding pain. Her vision came and went. Her body felt like it was on fire. Two paramedics had dragged her kicking and screaming to one of three ambulances back out on the street, but all she could do was feel the stabbing pain in between her eyes, and cry out Niles' name over and over again through tears that made tracks down her sooty face.

The medics realized she needed a sedative. Before long, C.C. Babcock was out like a light. Her left hand, balled into a tight, tight fist, moved one last time to her mouth before the men pulled it away to place an oxygen mask over her face.

"C.C.!"

She didn't see the frantic Sheffields arrive on-scene.

"Oh, my _God_, Max, where's _Niles_?"

Grace began to cry. Maggie held her, tears streaming down her face.

"C.C.," Max looked helplessly on as the ambulance sped away. He searched for someone who looked like they were in charge as another ambulance turned on its screeching sirens and headed down the street, turning at the first corner.

Finally a female officer approached them. "Do you know a C.C. Babcock or someone called Niles?" she asked.

"Yes! Yes!" all five family members exclaimed as one.

"Babcock is being taken to..." She consulted her notepad. "...Lenox Hill." Her radio crackled to life. She listened for a moment, then nodded to Maxwell. "And it sounds like they got your butler out," she smiled. "He's on his way to Lenox, too."

The family ran back to the Bentley and Max sped the short distance to the hospital. They poured into the Emergency Room, which in and of itself was surprisingly empty of waiting patients. "A man and a woman," Max said breathlessly, "Niles and C.C. Babcock, brought here by ambulance from a fire."

The nurse behind the desk checked her records. "Nothing in the system, sir."

"That policewoman said they were being brought here," Fran interjected. "They probably only just got here!"

"One moment."

The nurse hurried back to an area behind two large security doors.

"Oh, God, I'll never forgive myself if something's happened to Niles," Max said, leaning his butt against the high counter and leaning forward to grip his thighs.

"Sweetie, we don't know what happened."

"Yeah, for all we know," Brighton chipped in, trying to lighten the mood, "Miss Babcock may have just spontaneously combusted."

"If she had, Brighton, there wouldn't be anything to bring to the emergency room," Grace reminded him.

He rolled his eyes and looked away as one of the doors opened with a mechanical sound. The nurse returned to her post. "They've both just arrived, are you their family?"

"Yes!" the quintet chorused.

"If you'll have a seat, they're being examined right now. You'll be able to go back after that's complete."

Frustrated, the five shuffled into one corner of the waiting room looking dejected. But Fran popped back up and quietly approached the nurse. "Did you see them?" she asked. "Are they all right?"

"I honestly can't tell you. They both looked like they were unconscious when I went back there."

Fran's face crumpled and she ran to be comforted by her Maxwell. "Oh, if something happens to Niles, I'll never forgive myself."

"Now, now, darling, whatever happened can't possibly be your fault. You weren't even home!"

"I just keep thinking that if we hadn't gone out tonight, none of this would have happened."

"Actually," Grace said, her voice nearly a whisper, "if we _had_ all been home, whatever happened could have happened to _all_ of us."

"Yes, sweetheart, we're very lucky," Maxwell smiled across at her. "I can only hope Niles and C.C. were as lucky."

(=(=(=(=(=(=(=(N-C)=)=)=)=)=)=)=)

C.C. rose back to the land of the living quickly. She found herself lying in a bed with curtains pulled around her. She recognized the sounds immediately. She was in a hospital. But why? What had happened?

Opening her eyes, she was startled for a moment when her hearing seemed to fade. Then suddenly it was fine again. Remembering the intense pain she'd been feeling right before blacking out, she was surprised to find nothing seemed to hurt. Not her head, not her arms, nowhere on her body.

She sat up and scooted off the bed. She was still in her street clothes, she noticed, and was about to open the curtain when a man's voice wafted above the beeping noises. "He needs to be taken to MEETH," the voice said. "And I mean _stat_!"

MEETH? C.C. knew that place. It was where she'd had her LASIK surgery. The Manhattan Eye, Ear and Throat Hospital less than a dozen blocks from the house.

The house.

Oh, God, Niles.

She swept the curtain back and spotted the object of her thoughts two stalls down. A nurse was taking his pulse. The right sleeve of his shirt had been shredded up to his shoulder, his skin wrapped in white gauze. She inched closer. He must be alive, she reasoned, or they wouldn't have dressed a wound.

His right arm. She rubbed hers, remembering how it had felt on fire.

The nurse moved to type something into a nearby laptop and that's when she saw Niles from the neck up. The entire front of his face was swathed in what looked like wet bandages of some sort, with larger and thicker pieces of gauze covering the ear she could see. There was a spot of blood in what appeared to be the intersection of his eyes and nose.

Instinctively she reached up to the same spot on her head and remembered the stabbing pain she'd felt there multiple times, and the throbbing headache. And how her face had felt so very hot.

"Hey, you're supposed to be in bed, ma'am," the nurse said when she'd finished typing.

"Not until I find out how he is."

The nurse nodded her head toward the prone figure. "You his wife?"

C.C. knew they'd tell her nothing unless she was a relative. "Yes. We haven't been married that long," she gushed, rushing to his side. "Please, tell me how he is."

"He's got some burns, the worst is second degree on his right arm and hand," she advised. "His face took some heat but it doesn't look any worse than first degree."

"So he's going to be okay?"

"And who is this?" a man's voice asked from behind.

"C.C. Ba—" she glanced sidelong at the nurse. "Niles. C.C. Niles," she said, holding out her hand.

"Dr. Mason," he said, shaking her hand briefly.

"I'm his wife," C.C. lied. "He just has a few burns?"

"Superficially, yes. We're a little concerned about his ears, though."

"What? His ears?"

C.C. recalled everything going silent, not being able to hear. Then she remembered tilting her head and being able to hear the crackle of fire. Again to hear metal being torn to pieces. And again to hear Niles moaning, softly saying her name. Finally, to hear doors creaking...only just now realizing they had to have been the basement's double-door exit to the back of the townhouse.

"Are his ears okay?"

"We're not sure. We're sending him over to Manhattan Eye and Ear so the otology team can assess them."

"But...what do you think is wrong?"

"It's hard to say, Mrs. Niles," the doctor replied gravely. "But I'm very concerned."

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When C.C. was finally allowed to sign discharge papers, it was well after Niles had been transported to MEETH by ambulance. She was chomping at the bit to get there. It hadn't even occurred to her why she was so hell-bent on it, but she moved through the ER waiting room so fast she didn't even hear Maggie call her name.

Running to catch up with her, Maggie yelled, "Miss _Babcock_!"

She skidded to a halt.

"I was supposed to wait for you and tell you that Daddy, Fran, Brighton and Grace went to Manhattan Eye and Ear to be with Niles."

"Thanks. I'm hailing a cab."

"But I'm supposed to see that you get home!"

"Sorry, kid, you can tell them you did your best. I'm not going anywhere until I know Niles is okay."

Throwing her hands up in exasperation, Maggie could do nothing but get into the cab C.C. had hailed, and then stare at the wild-eyed expression the woman wore the entire ride there.

(=(=(=(=(=(=(=(N-C)=)=)=)=)=)=)=)

"Are you his wife?" the nurse on duty asked after C.C. demanded to see Niles.

"Yes," C.C. replied, ignoring the gasps coming from behind her. "I am, now please, I need to see him."

"He's in A and B Scanning right now," she said. "I'm sorry, but I can't let you into the testing areas. As soon as he's completed the CT I think we'll be getting him settled into a room. Please have a seat and I'll let you know as soon as you can see him, okay?"

C.C. just nodded dumbly and went to sit in one of those chairs that were designed to look comfortable but may as well have been felled logs.

"C.C., did you just say you were Niles' _wife_?" Maxwell whispered rather loudly.

Everyone's eyes were on her. "Well of _course_ I did, Maxwell," she replied in just as loud a whisper. "They won't tell you anything if you're not family!"

"Good point," Fran stated, nodding. "They don't know anything yet, do they?" she asked sadly.

"No. They're doing some sort of...scans and a CT."

"Will they let us in to see him too or do we have to all say we're his wife?" Brighton asked in deadpan.

Maxwell just frowned at his only son before turning back to C.C. "Tell us what happened," he said softly, laying a hand over hers.

C.C. shook her head. "I don't know, Maxwell." It was all she could do to think back to when she'd left the house. It seemed like an eternity had passed since then. "I was in the living room, I turned off the TV."

"Yeah, we were watching _Manhattan Nights_ before we left for the dinner theatre," Fran chimed in.

"I suddenly realized I was all alone in the house, it seemed like everyone had left."

"I'm sorry, C.C., I thought someone had told you our plans for the evening," Maxwell said, patting her hand.

She waved him off, lost in thought. "I didn't know Niles was still there."

"I think I saw him go upstairs with a basket of laundry just as we were heading out the door," Maggie offered.

"So I figured I'd just go home. I stopped for Vietnamese on my way home. I got the duck."

"And here I thought it would've been chicken," Fran said to Max in a whisper, earning a stern glare.

"I remember eating and then suddenly I got this pain in my head. Right here," she explained, pointing to the spot just above the bridge of her nose. "I didn't know what was happening, but right after that I got sick to my stomach. I barely made it to the sink."

Fran made a face.

"I was watching a movie, _An Affair to Remember_."

"Ay, I _just love_ that movie!" Grace and Fran intoned together.

Maxwell shushed them with a look and nodded at C.C. to continue.

"I don't remember, it's all so jumbled. I just...I know...wait...the movie, the duck...the news flash, that was it! I saw the fire on a news flash!"

"That's how you discovered it?"

"Yes, Maxwell, I ran out of my apartment so fast I'm not even sure I closed my door!"

"You didn't see Niles?" Fran asked.

"Well...not until I got to the basement doors."

By the time C.C. finished explaining the odd sounds she'd heard that had that led her to Niles' location in the basement, a doctor had come into the waiting room. All six of them jumped to their feet.

"Which of you is C.C. Niles, please?"

Five pairs of eyes turned C.C.'s way, giving her varying degrees of odd looks.

"C.C. _what_?" Brighton asked.

"That's me," she said, stepping forward. "Doctor, how is he?"

"Who are they?" the doctor asked.

"They're Niles's family," she said. "Brother, wife, kids," pointing at each of them in turn.

"Yes, _Uncle_ Niles is our favourite," Brighton added dramatically.

"Doctor—"

"Timmons," the man said, shaking C.C.'s hand. "I must tell you, the preliminary tests are worrisome."

"What happened?"

"We can only tell that it appears both his inner ears were damaged. There is severe enough inflammation that we won't know for certain whether it's permanent or not for at least another week. We just aren't able to assess the auditory ossicles yet."

"The _pop_sicles?" Maggie asked, blinking.

"What's permanent?" Fran asked, clinging to Maxwell's arm and grasping C.C's hand tightly without even realizing she'd done so.

C.C. found herself squeezing back so hard it made Fran grimace as Dr. Timmons replied, "His hearing, ma'am."

"His _hearing_?" Fran shot a look at C.C. "No remarks about my voice, Miss Babcock."

"I'm afraid so. He hasn't regained consciousness yet, but from what I can tell, it appears that whatever caused the fire may have cost him his hearing."

"Oh, dear God in heaven," Maxwell breathed, sagging against Fran. "Anything but that."

"You—you mean Niles is...deaf?" C.C. squeaked, squeezing Fran's hand even tighter. She didn't notice Fran twisting around in pain, trying desperately to free her fingers, her mouth in a large O as Grace rushed in to help.

"As I said, Mrs..." he cocked his head at her.

"We call each other by our last names. It's an _X-Files_ thing," she said quickly.

Dr. Timmons shook his head. There were always kooks in the City. "Mrs. Niles, the fact of the matter is, we just don't know yet. Without him being awake to respond to hearing tests, I can't be certain of anything."

"Can I see him?" she asked as Timmons turned to walk back to the desk.

"Yes, he's been made comfortable in a private room per Mr. Sheffield's...Sheffield? And you're brothers?"

"Different fathers," Fran explained, shaking her pained hand. "It's a British thing."

"Broadway producer," Brighton added, pointing proudly toward his father.

"Partner," C.C. reminded them, pointing at her own chest.

"Next thing you'll tell me is you're related to Andrew Lloyd Webber," the doctor sighed, shaking his head.

"No, but my father once knew an Andrew Dice Clay," Fran remarked.

"Get out, Fran, _the_ Andrew Dice Clay?" Brighton asked excitedly.

"Oh, no, sweetie," she laughed, flipping her hand in his direction. "_That _man was funny. If vulgar. The one Daddy knew was just funny _looking_."

"Mrs. Niles," Timmons said, ready to be rid of this odd group and ignoring the unlocatable snorts that emitted from some of them, "I'll escort you to his room. The rest of you must remain here."

"Let us know how he is, Miss Babcock," Fran said.

"Miss?" the nurse at the desk said as C.C. and Timmons disappeared down the corridor. "I thought she said she was his wife?"

"Oh," Maxwell smiled sheepishly, "well, C.C. and Niles haven't been married that long."

"Yeah, like maybe what, now, about two hours?" Brighton said, checking his watch. One sister on either side of him smacked his left and right arms simultaneously. "Ow!"

"So does someone want to explain something to me here?" Fran asked.

"Like what?"

"Oh, I don't _know_, Maxwell, like how come C.C. suddenly cares enough about Niles to pose as his wife so _she_ gets to be the one to see him?"

"It is rather odd, Daddy," Grace nodded.

"Yes, I suppose you have a point there, girls," he replied. "You don't think she somehow thinks she _caused_ this, do you?"

"Honey, that's very sweet, but shiksas don't do guilt," Fran patted his arm gently. "There must be some other reason."

Then, as the same single thought went through both their minds, they just stared at each other for a moment.

"What?" Brighton asked, suddenly interested. "What do you two know that you're not dishing?"

"Yeah, come on, Fran, spill it," Grace ordered.

"I don't know _what_ you're talking about," Fran said, the scene from so long ago playing through her mind. Her and Max coming home from never having met Lenny, Fran still never having recovered from the shock of seeing Niles and Miss Babcock in a liplock that could've melted the entire Antarctic.

"Oh, come on, Fraaaaan," Grace whined in an all-too-familiar way.

Max sensed this long night was about to get even longer.

(=(=(=(=(=(=(=(N-C)=)=)=)=)=)=)=)

C.C. followed the doctor into Niles's room. There he lay, looking not all that worse for wear save for the bandage she'd seen on his arm earlier. Now he'd been changed into a hospital gown, though. And then she looked up. She could see small blisters on his left cheek, but the bandages covering his ears were what made her breath catch.

"He's stable now, Mrs. Niles, but still unconscious. When he does wake up, he may have trouble talking. His throat is pretty scorched, but I don't believe there will be permanent damage to his vocal chords. We've put some thick gel in his eyes just to prevent damage from anything that might have gotten into them. He may not be able to open them very well yet."

She nodded, moving forward to get a closer look. The rise and fall of his chest was comforting.

"Oh, one more thing before I go," Dr. Timmons added, reaching for something on a nearby tray. "He had this clutched in his hand. Took forever to loosen his grip. When I saw what it was, I thought you might want it."

She took the crumpled thing from him and as he walked out the door, she smoothed it out, realizing it was a photograph. Tears sprang to her eyes unbidden. Someone had taken it while the two of them were dancing at the wedding.

They looked happy.

She turned the photo over and in Niles's unmistakeable scrawl saw the words _Third happiest time in my life_.

Clutching it in her hand, she pulled a chair to his bed and perched on the edge. "Niles, what does this mean?" she asked, and then the realization hit that he quite possibly couldn't hear her. "You know, I...I found you down there, in the basement. I don't know how, I was just, I—"

C.C. stopped, unable to speak past the lump in her throat. She thought back to earlier, when she'd been psychoanalyzing all the relationships in her life, and how she'd been unable to categorize the one with the man who lay unconscious before her. She looked back down at the photograph and for the first time asked herself how _he_ felt about _her_.

Whereas the rest of the time C.C. had known Maxwell's butler she'd kept him at arm's length, tonight she had reached out to him in terror. Somehow, he had guided her. She had felt his pain. She had heard the fire, heard his moans. She had found her way to him. Was it both literally and figuratively?

Now her hand found its way along the side of the bed to where his left arm rested beneath a blanket. C.C. wrapped her fingers around it and bowed her head. What if he _had_ lost his hearing? What would that mean to him? She closed her eyes and remembered the lightning-fast insults, thought of all the things he'd overheard and later used against her, the times she'd caught him listening to Webber tunes, the way he reacted when one of the Sheffields…or she herself, for that matter…called for him. The few times she thought he was listening so intently to what she was saying that she wondered what exactly he was expecting to hear.

To lose something so integral to what made Niles, Niles, seemed...so wrong. So unjust. "Niles," she said, swallowing hard. "Niles, I wish you could hear me."

The soap opera came back to her. The movie came back to her. He wouldn't be able to work. A deaf man couldn't be a butler, could he? Although, she considered, sometimes when Fran Sheffield was in the room that could be a _good_ thing. He'd be able to cook and clean, and even do laundry, but safely? He wouldn't hear the oven timer ring. He wouldn't hear what someone was asking him to fetch. He wouldn't hear the doorbell ring.

"Niles, if you really _have_ lost your hearing, I'll still be here."

Is that what she felt? Did she feel it for him? What was she saying, but most of all, why was she saying it? She hadn't thought about it, hadn't even thought what it would mean if she kept that promise.

But in that moment, she didn't care. All she could think of was when he'd been lying so helplessly in the bed after his heart attack. How frightened she'd been of losing him, how she'd confessed to Fran she didn't hate him, how she'd made such a fool of herself in front of everyone jumping on that gurney when she thought it was Niles who'd died.

But then everything had gone back to normal. Or had it?

All the nice things he'd done for her...well, aside from the normal barbs. But then again, those were what she lived for. They were her fun. So in a way, him keeping that up _was_ doing something nice for her. They remained the same, always together yet never really close. Always in each other's way but neither trying too hard to move.

"It was bad enough when I thought you'd be blind, I just wanted—" Her head whipped around, as though a stray thought was darting behind her and she was desperate to catch it. "When I thought you'd be _blind_?" she repeated. But before C.C. could wrap her head around what _that_ was all about, she felt his arm twitch beneath the blanket and jumped. "Niles?"

Slowly he pulled his arm out from under the blanket. There were some burns evident there, but no blisters. She lightly touched her fingertips to his skin and he flinched. "I'm sorry," she breathed, but as her hand jerked away, his moved lightning quick to grab it.

She felt his strength as his fingers felt her fingers, her palm, and finally as they enclosed hers, engulfing her hand completely. She smiled, only then realizing she'd begun to cry. "I'm here, Niles." Their hands fell to the bed, his strength seeming to wane.

He opened his mouth to speak and an unidentifiable croak emerged.

"Shhh, don't. You'll be okay."

He shook his head.

"Niles? You can hear me?"

There was no reaction. C.C. bit her lower lip. She extricated her right hand from his, then gently grabbed his wrist. Forming her left hand into a letter C, with her thumb as the bottom and all for fingers curled over for the top, she slid it under his palm, working his fingers around the curve of the improvised letter.

"Please understand," she whispered, watching him expectantly. He frowned.

C.C. moved her hand out from under his, then a little more forcefully clapped his cupped hand back down atop her letter C, lifted it, then clapped it back down again. "Two C's," she said. "C.C."

He struggled to open his eyes, but she saw the thick gel Dr. Timmons had mentioned was making it impossible for him to see very much. She kept her left hand in the letter shape and was about to try it again with him when suddenly he grabbed her wrist. She gasped in surprise, but didn't try to pull away.

Slowly he brought her hand up to his cheek. The C was now resting against his skin and she began to tremble. To her surprise, a small smile appeared on his face. He let go of her and formed his own hand into a letter C. He punched it twice into the air.

He understood!

"Yes, Niles, yes! Yes, it's me. It's C.C.!" She grabbed his hand and held it against her cheek so she could feel him nodding.

"C.C.," he ground out, his voice raspy and raw. She nodded again so he could feel it, and he smiled.

She didn't know what would happen with Niles now, but that one small triumph erased her panic and made her feel better than she had about anything. She would help him, yes, even though she didn't know what that would entail. But whatever it was, C.C. Babcock was prepared for the challenge. After all, challenges were what she lived for.

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Days and nights passed. Eventually fire investigators came to the Trump Place condo the Sheffields had purchased as 'temporary' housing thanks to the nearly complete destruction of their home. Having pulled what was almost an all-nighter with Maxwell due to several theatre wires getting crossed the evening before, C.C. had spent the night on the couch.

Right in the middle of Fran lamenting the loss of her high school yearbook to flames, there was a knock at the door. C.C. had just emerged from having a shower when she observed the guests and raced into the living room. "Have you found out what started it?" she asked.

"Yes, ma'am, I believe we have," the older of the two men stated as the family seated themselves. Maxwell gestured for them to sit as well but they declined with shaking heads. "We can't stay long, we just wanted to speak to you in person."

"So what was it?" Fran asked.

"The boiler."

"Boiler? Houses still have those?"

"Haven't you ever been in the basement, Brighton?"

"Are you kidding, Maggie? It's full of cobwebs!"

"Children, please!" Maxwell admonished. "The boiler?" he prompted the two men.

"Yes. We've pieced it all together…er…as it were. Apparently your butler was sitting on a stool near the boiler. It appeared perhaps looking through boxes. It exploded as he sat there."

C.C. and Fran gasped, their hands simultaneously flying to their mouths.

"My God, poor Niles," Maxwell said sadly. "There was no warning?"

"It's hard to say. We haven't yet determined why the boiler blew but apparently shrapnel flew in all directions, cutting some wires near the fuse box. That caused a spark and with all those boxes down there, it went up like a tinderbox."

The second man finally spoke up. "We've also been able to match Niles' injuries to the explosion. They extracted a piece of shrapnel from right between his eyes. It was the hot water from the boiler that actually hit him right in the face."

C.C. felt the sharp jab of pain full force, just like the night it had happened. Clutching her robe tightly with one hand, she gripped the arm of the couch so hard her knuckles turned white.

"It would appear he received some flash burns on his face, but his clothing protected his torso."

"However," the second man chimed in, "while he was trying to crawl out the basement doors, the fire did manage to get too close to his arm. That's why he had 2nd degree burns there."

C.C.'s right arm began feeling as though it were melting and she made a small strangled sound.

"What about his hearing?" Grace asked. "Why did his ears get damaged?"

"Well, it's hard to say precisely what he was doing at the moment the boiler went. Temporary or permanent hearing loss could be from the sound of the boiler blowing or just hitting his head when it got him."

"Maybe he had his feet stretched out in that direction before it blew up," Fran mused quietly. "And it caught them when it went?"

"Definitely a possibility, Mrs. Sheffield," the first man replied, nodding. "At any rate, the water could easily have taken his sight, or the sound of it blowing his hearing, so he's a very lucky man."

C.C. frowned. Had she just heard that right?

"I just don't understand how any of that could've cost him _both feet_," Maxwell said, a tear escaping his very British eye.

"Feet?" C.C. exclaimed.

With a sidelong glance at the lady in what could barely be called a bathrobe, the second investigator replied, "From what we can tell, they were simply crushed when the main floor came down."

"I'm sorry, folks, we have to be going. Court case in Queens," the second man said, nodding to the family.

"Yes, we're very sorry about your friend, but at least we think we can rule out foul play."

C.C. jumped to her feet, face ashen. "What did he mean about Niles' feet?" she asked, thinking she must have simply heard him wrong.

"C.C.? What are you asking us that for? You were the one who initially found out about it, posing as his wife," Maxwell replied, rising to his feet in synch with Fran.

"Miss Babcock, you don't _look_ so good," Fran intoned.

It was just Brighton's luck that she fell on top of him when she fainted.


	3. Without Feet

**Chapter 3: Without Feet**

_And without feet I still can come to Thee,_

Forgetting what had brought him to the basement to begin with, Niles moved closer to the boiler and deftly removed three boxes, behind which were two more rows of neatly stacked ones. From those he pulled one out from under another. It was plain brown cardboard and not labelled. This was his.

He pulled a footstool over, sat down and placed his box on the floor. Opening it, he took a photograph right off the top that he kept hidden down here for reasons of safety. After all, he thought, chuckling, Grace had turned into quite the snooper. He was so proud of that little one.

He heard that strange sound again; the one that had brought him to the basement to begin with. Only this time he knew exactly where it was coming from. It got louder and louder, then stopped.

Frowning, Niles rose to his feet, photo still clutched in his left hand. Perhaps it would be a good idea to call a service company to check on the old throwback to days gone by. He laughed heartily, wishing Miss Babcock had been around for, "But nobody's wanted to service that model for _years_."

Niles replaced the boxes, stacking them neatly as he always did when there came a loud squeal from behind him. He turned instinctively toward the double door exit, a look of panic on his face, intending to run as fast as he could—

—for the very last time.

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All at once, before she could even wipe the tears from her cheeks, she felt a sharp jab of pain right in the back of her head and cried out. As suddenly as it hit, however, it was gone, and she was left wondering whether she was getting a migraine or if it had only been her imagination.

But then she started feeling sick. "Bad duck," she managed to say aloud, launching herself from the love seat, barely making it to the kitchen sink before the entire Vietnamese dinner was retched from her body. Odd, she thought as her body finally stopped heaving, she'd never gotten bad food from Safran in the past.

When C.C. managed to clean up after herself and wash the last remaining bit of vomit down the drain, she resigned herself to the fact that the incident had given her a headache. The dull throbbing at the base of her skull seemed to intensify with every step she took until she stumbled, nearly falling to her knees.

"What the hell's the matter with me?" she wondered aloud. Even Chester seemed worried, she noticed. He stood in front of her clearly agitated, his tail up and curved over his back, his head cocked to the side as if trying to figure out whether she was drunk again or not.

Hoping she wasn't coming down with that H1N1 that had been in the news lately, she managed to make it back to the love seat just as a breaking news bulletin bleated itself into existence on the channel she'd been watching. C.C. grabbed the remote with the intent of turning the noise box off, holding the back of her head as she fumbled for it between the cushions, when something caught her attention.

"_...here at the home of the second most successful Broadway show producer Maxwell Sheffield, Tina. As you can see there are flames leaping from the first floor windows. Firemen are on scene and trying their best to attack this, but it seems like it's getting the best of—"_

C.C. heard no more. Before the reporter could finish his sentence, she was out the door and at the elevator, impatiently waiting as it rose to her floor.

Had the Sheffields been home when it happened?

She whipped out her cellphone as she entered the elevator, but couldn't get a signal. Fuming, she rubbed her neck as the pain worsened and wondered if they'd forgotten to turn the vents on, because it felt really hot in this stupid elevator.

Racing to the street, she hit Speed Dial #2, Maxwell's cellphone, but maddeningly it went straight to voice mail. She didn't have Fran's stored in her phone, only the office and home numbers. Both of which, if the pictures she'd seen were accurate, would be useless to her now.

Revving up her Beemer, she ground it into gear and dialled Maxwell again. This time she left a frantic message for him to call her because his house was on fire, barely getting the words out while trying to make it through the streets of New York without hitting anything or anyone.

Oh, God, Niles. Where was Niles? Was he out on the street with the fire trucks already trying to figure out how the hell he was going to clean up the mess? She had to chuckle, but then regretted it as a stab of pain hit her right in the back of the head again. She fumbled for her air conditioner knob, wondering why in the world it was so damn hot in her car on a late fall evening.

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He came to, wondering why he felt so damn hot. Where was he, anyway, and why was it so quiet? He opened his eyes, only to find himself face-down on the concrete, flames licking at his legs. He cried out and tried to push himself to his knees in an effort to stand up without really taking stock of the scene behind him.

Whatever was going on, all he knew was that if he didn't get out of there fast, they'd be having barbecued butler for dinner.

But he found that as soon as he moved his head and torso, a sharp, stabbing pain at the base of his skull made him lose his breath. Then he began to choke on acrid smoke and tried to figure out what had happened, where he was and what the hell that horrific cracking noise was.

A split second later he knew, and balled his fists behind his head to protect himself as the floor above came crashing down. A blinding white light stole his vision as sharp icepicks traveled from his toes clear up to the base of his head, his feet now trapped beneath debris. He roared with pain, clutching at the small 3x5 photo he'd taken from his box, crumpling it in his hand as his voice wailed in agony.

He could barely breathe from the smoke. It burned his eyes, he couldn't even open them. The fire was deafening. He was going to die. He knew it as surely as he knew what was in that picture in his hand. The picture he adored but didn't dare let anyone see. It didn't matter now. No one would ever know. By the time anyone found him, it would be ashes, just like he would.

The blessed oblivion of unconsciousness overtook him. In his mind as the pain began to fade was one face. Mentally he reached out to her, as though he could touch her with just a thought. _Oh, C.C.…_

(=(=(=(=(=(=(=(N-C)=)=)=)=)=)=)=)

C.C. cried out as she got as close to the scene as the cops would let her. She threw the car into Park, holding her head in pain as she stumbled from the car. "My house!" she cried as a female officer tried pushing her back. "That's my house that's on fire!"

"Who are you?" the officer yelled above the din of sirens and water hoses at full blast.

"C.C. Babcock, I'm Maxwell Sheffield's partner, that's...oh, _God_, was anybody home?"

The woman grabbed C.C.'s arm and practically dragged her to one of the three fire captains on-scene. "Charlie, says she's Sheffield's business partner!" she yelled.

"Was anyone home?" he said loudly into her ear.

"I...not when I left!" she replied, feeling the heat of the flames even from this far back.

"What time was that?"

"Around 6:30 I think!"

"And no one was home?"

"Well, the Sheffields weren't! But...oh, my _God_, _Niles!_"

"Who's Niles?"

"The butler, he's...my...I...oh, my God, Niles!"

"Where are the Sheffields, ma'am?" The female officer had returned.

"I don't know, they left when I was in the living room, I don't know where they went, out to dinner?" C.C. was babbling. "But Niles, Niles, I don't know if he went with them, please, is anyone in there?"

"We haven't been able to enter the premises yet, ma'am, is there an outside entrance in the back?"

"Uh...yeah, yes, the terrace doors, they lead to the office, there are stairs! Uh...kitchen door!" Suddenly something else came to mind. "_Basement_!" she screamed at the top of her lungs. "Basement _doors_!"

The captain walked away, barking into his CB. The female officer walked off to consult with two other cops and C.C. was left at the front of a fire truck just staring into the flames.

And that's when she heard it. Heard it? Did she really hear it? She _felt_ it. A scream of pure agony washed over her as though it had been uttered right in her ear. She dropped to her knees, covering her ears. She knew that voice as surely as she knew her own name.

"Niles," she whispered. The entire back of her body felt like it was on fire; her head hurt so. Her eyes were burning so much that tears rolled down her face, but it was the unbelievable pain from her feet that made her scream, "CAPTAIN!"

Charlie Braghen whipped his head around mid-sentence at the gut-wrenching cry and rushed to the side of the blonde he'd just been talking to. Kneeling next to her, he wrapped an arm around her, fingers closing around both of her upper arms. "What is it?"

"He's...in there. I know it," C.C. sobbed. "The pain...he's _hurt_..."

"Who? This Niles fellow?"

"Cap'n Braghen, we just lost the main floor!"

Braghen tore himself from C.C.'s side and began barking orders. The other two captains on-scene rushed to him and in the confusion, C.C. was all but forgotten. She looked up at the raging fire before her, her ice-blue eyes nearly glowing in the smoke-filled night.

"Basement?" she whispered fiercely. "Niles, please, are you down there?"

Then it was if her feet had gone numb. Or been removed altogether. The noise around her became deafening; the light from the fire, almost blinding. She could feel the pain grow worse in her right forearm. Then her left hand started feeling cramped as though she'd been clenching it for too long.

She closed her eyes and when she reopened them, she felt herself lying on a cool concrete floor. She scrambled to get up but there was something else now, a terrible agony shooting up her legs. Blinking away the heat that she could still feel, this time when she tried to move, she heard a whimpering so soft it was barely there.

"Oh, C.C…."

"Niles!" she cried. She couldn't get her feet to work. Why couldn't she feel them? "Niles, where are you? Basement! Basement? Niles, _run_!"

Another attempt to flee. This time something else. She could hear a scraping sound and then a loud creaking noise that sounded like- "The basement doors! I'm right, he's in the-!" She still couldn't get to her feet and looked around wildly, wondering why it sometimes hurt and sometimes not, why she couldn't get herself up, why there was no one coming to her aid.

"Niles! Someone help me, please!" But nobody paid attention; it was as though she was completely alone. She didn't even think about what she did. It was like her feet weren't necessary, like some unseen wind floated her around the block. Faster she moved until she was flying full-speed and then to the alley behind the row of spacious townhouses until finally reaching the back of the Sheffields'.

There they were. The double doors, and the left one was open. "HELP ME!" C.C. called, collapsing in a heap right at the entrance. But the older alley just wasn't wide enough for fire trucks. She could see the fire had spread to Roger Clinton's house to the one side but didn't seem to have gone the other way. Using her hands to pull herself over the threshold of the open door, she managed to get her hands down to the first step and was hit by a wave of heat so thick it made her reel from the sheer intensity.

Before she could try again, half a dozen firefighters surrounded her. "Niles!" she cried, seeing a fist several steps down. "Let me get him, please!"

"That's our job, ma'am," the largest of them said, gently pushing her back. "We'll get him."

(=(=(=(=(=(=(=(N-C)=)=)=)=)=)=)=)

Hours had passed. Or was it minutes? She didn't know. All she knew was a blinding pain. Her vision came and went. Sounds seem to fade and then come back full force. Her body felt like it was on fire. Two paramedics had dragged her kicking and screaming in agony to one of three ambulances back out on the street, but all she could do was feel the stabbing pain in the back of her head and feet, and cry out Niles' name over and over again through tears that made tracks down her sooty face.

The medics realized she needed a sedative. Before long, C.C. Babcock was out like a light. Her left hand, balled into a tight, tight fist, moved one last time to her mouth before the men pulled it away to place an oxygen mask over her face.

(=(=(=(=(=(=(=(N-C)=)=)=)=)=)=)=)

"Are you his wife?" the nurse on duty asked after C.C. demanded to see Niles.

"Yes," C.C. replied, ignoring the gasps coming from behind her. "I am, now please, I need to see him." She frowned, looking around her. "Something's missing," she mumbled. "It—"

"He's in X-ray right now," she said. "I'm sorry, but I can't let you into Radiology. From what I understand, he'll be going into surgery right away."

"What? Surgery? For _what_? What's wrong with him?"

"I'm sorry, ma'am, but until you sign this consent—"

C.C. snatched the clipboard out of the woman's hands, practically leaping over the high desk to do so. She saw the signature line at the bottom and without a single thought, signed "_C.C. Niles_."

"Please have a seat and I'll let you know as soon as you can see him, okay?"

"No, it is _not_ okay! First his eyes, then his hearing and now you're taking him into surgery and won't even tell me _why_?" Her brow furrowed as stared at the nurse. Why was the woman so familiar?

"I don't know anything about his eyes or ears, ma'am," the nurse replied brusquely. "The surgery is for his feet. Now _please_, I can't possibly get this," she shook the clipboard C.C. had practically thrown back at her, "into the system if you keep me standing here talking."

C.C.'s shoulders slumped as she nodded and went to sit in one of those chairs that were designed to look comfortable but may as well have been felled logs.

"C.C., did you just say you were Niles' _wife_?" Maxwell whispered rather loudly.

Everyone's eyes were on her. "Well of _course_ I did, Maxwell," she replied in just as loud a whisper. "They won't tell you anything if you're not family!"

"Good point, Miss Bab—er-Mrs. Niles." Fran made a face. "Okay, that just _so_ does not sound right."

"C.C., what's the matter?" Maxwell asked, touching her arm gently. "Did the nurse up there tell you something?"

"He's going into surgery," C.C. said in a small voice.

"Oh, my _God,_ what _for_?" Fran screeched.

The children held each others' hands as C.C. replied. "I don't know, something about his feet." She remembered back to the scene of the fire…someone yelling that the first floor had collapsed. "Oh…Niles," she whispered, dropping her head into her hands.

Maxwell and Fran each got on one side of her, afraid to touch her because she was, after all, still C.C. Babcock…yet unable to express their own fears and worries any other way that with soft, gentle pats or rubs to the blonde's arms or back.

"He's strong, Miss Babcock," Fran said in what was actually a very soothing voice.

"I know," C.C. whispered as she raised her head, and the entire family was shocked to find her blue eyes filled with tears. "It's not just that, Nan…Mrs…Fran."

"Well, what is it, then, Miss Babcock?" the young Grace Freud…Sheffield…asked as she came to stand in front of her.

C.C. just looked at her. "I feel like I've done this all before, only somehow…differently."

The Sheffields exchanged puzzled looks with one another but said no more.

(=(=(=(=(=(=(=(N-C)=)=)=)=)=)=)=)

C.C. followed the doctor into Niles's room. There he lay, looking not all that worse for wear save for the bandage she'd seen on his arm earlier. Now he'd been changed into a hospital gown, though. And then she looked up. She could see small blisters on his left cheek, but it was when she looked down at the other end of the bed that her breath caught.

"He's stable now, Mrs. Niles, but still unconscious. When he does wake up, he may have trouble talking. His throat is pretty scorched, but I don't believe there will be permanent damage to his vocal chords. We've put some thick gel in his eyes just to prevent damage from anything that might have gotten into them. He may not be able to open them very well yet."

She nodded, moving forward to get a closer look. The rise and fall of his chest was comforting, but she couldn't keep her eyes from roaming down…down…

"Please, and you must listen to me on this," the doctor…she didn't even know his name…said sternly. "He doesn't yet know about his feet. We tried everything we could, but there was no saving them. I'm very, very sorry."

C.C. just felt the tears fall, unable to move, speak or even think, really. The doctor had almost made it out the door when he snapped his fingers, came back in and reached for something on a nearby tray. "He had this clutched in his hand. Took forever to loosen his grip. When I saw what it was, I thought you might want it."

She took the crumpled thing from him and as he walked out the door, she smoothed it out, realizing it was a photograph. Tears sprang to her eyes unbidden. Someone had taken it while the two of them were dancing at the wedding.

They looked happy.

She turned the photo over and in Niles's unmistakeable scrawl saw the words _Fourth happiest time in my life_.

Clutching it in her hand, she pulled a chair to his bed and perched on the edge.

He would never dance again.

Unable to speak past the lump in her throat, she thought back to earlier, when she'd been psychoanalyzing all the relationships in her life, and how she'd been unable to categorize the one with the man who lay unconscious before her. She looked back down at the photograph and for the first time asked herself how _he_ felt about _her_.

Whereas the rest of the time C.C. had known Maxwell's butler she'd kept him at arm's length, tonight she had reached out to him in terror. Somehow, he had guided her. She had felt his pain. She had heard the fire, heard his moans. She had found her way to him. Was it both literally and figuratively?

Now her hand found its way along the side of the bed to where his left arm rested beneath a blanket. C.C. wrapped her fingers around it and bowed her head. She remembered the dancing they'd done after her awards ceremony in the living room of the Sheffield home. The way he would sling an insult at her and then practically skip out of the room or better yet, the way he'd do it zipping by her so fast that he was gone before the barb even registered.

To lose the ability to walk, run or dance…something so integral to what made Niles, Niles, seemed...so wrong. So unjust. "Niles," she said, swallowing hard. "Niles, I wish you could hear me."

The soap opera came back to her. The movie came back to her. He wouldn't be able to work. A man with no feet couldn't be a butler, could he? He'd be able to cook and clean from a wheelchair, but only do a certain point. And forget about laundry or anything on any floor other than whichever one he was on at the moment. She could hardly see a millionaire's butler being someone who couldn't even get up the step to the front door.

"Niles, if you're stuck in a scooter chair forever, I'll still be here." She couldn't help but smile, almost being able to hear him say…

"It'll still be faster than your broom."

She jumped to her feet. "Niles?" His beautiful…what, _beautiful_?...eyes opened and looked right into hers.

"Something dreadful must have happened if _you're_ here," he rasped. "Which body part did I lose?"

To his utter surprise, she burst into tears, bending to bury her face in his shoulder. "Miss…Babcock, what…?"

"Oh, God, Niles, it's not funny anymore."

He swallowed hard past the throat that hurt like hell. He moved his shoulder a bit, which made her raise her head. When he opened his mouth to speak again, however, he found between the smoke inhalation and the lump in his throat, he couldn't get a word out. But his eyes asked the question for him. And they begged her to tell him the truth.

When he found out, he could very well lose it. Or he might just be stoically British about it and accept it with all the stubbornness she knew he had. Either way, it was now the person who'd once said she'd loathed him, who would be telling him that his feet…his talented, beautiful feet, were gone. He would probably wind up hating her even more than he already did.

But in that moment, she didn't care. All she could think of was when he'd been lying so helplessly in the bed after his heart attack. How frightened she'd been of losing him, how she'd confessed to Fran she didn't hate him, how she'd made such a fool of herself in front of everyone jumping on that gurney when she thought it was Niles who'd died.

This was C.C.'s moment to, for one of the first times in her life, be a true friend. "Niles, what I'm going to tell you may be hard for you to hear, but you must know something first."

He nodded, concern making the lines in his face seem deeper somehow.

"I know we haven't always been nice to each other." She barked a laugh at his raised eyebrow. "Okay, we've been enemies more often than not the entire time we've known each other. But…well, when I thought I'd…I mean, when I thought you'd…_shit_!"

Niles sniffed around, making a questioning face.

"No, no, no, not _that_ kind of shit!" C.C. admonished. "Niles, what I'm trying to say is that I want to help you."

He brought a hand up and wrapped it around his own throat, making choking sounds.

"Niles, _stop_ it!" she cried.

His demeanour abruptly changed. She was serious. Deathly serious. And deathly pale. For the first time he noticed she was shaking and he patted the bed next to his hip.

C.C. swallowed hard as she perched on the edge of the bed. She took his hand in hers and looked directly into his eyes. "I want to help you no matter what happens. Do you understand what I'm saying to you?"

He didn't really, but he also didn't want her yelling again, so he nodded.

"All right, that's more like it. Now, Niles, I had to tell them I was your wife in order for them to tell me what was going on." She felt Niles touch her ring finger and half-smiled. "No, you don't have a head injury, that's what I said. But what they had to do, well…they had no choice."

Niles broke out in a sweat. Suddenly he had the feeling he was somehow horribly disfigured or something. Why else would Miss Babcock be so _nice_ to him?

"When you were trapped in the basement, after the boiler blew up, you…wait…how did I know that? How did I…?" C.C. looked down along the bed. "Your feet," she whispered.

For there, just like two triangles, were the points of Niles's feet making tents in the blanket. "What the-?"

She felt a squeeze on her hand and turned to look back at Niles. He opened and closed his mouth as though trying to force himself to speak, but not a single sound emerged.

"Your feet," she breathed, "they're back."

Niles' eyes grew wide.

"Back?" Brighton asked as the Sheffields entered the room behind her. "Whaddya mean back, nothing ever happened to his feet, Miss Babcock."

She whirled to face the boy, her eyes as big as saucers.

"No, honey," Fran added as she sashayed up to her side. "It was his voice he lost, not his _feet_!" Fran noticed the look of alarm on Niles's face and turned to face C.C. "Miss Babcock, you don't _look_ so good," she said.

It was just Brighton's luck that she fell on top of him when she fainted.


	4. Without Voice

**Chapter 4: Without Voice**

_And without voice I still can call to Thee._

C.C. followed the doctor into Niles's room. There he lay, looking not all that worse for wear save for the bandage she'd seen on his arm earlier. Now he'd been changed into a hospital gown, though. She could see small blisters on his left cheek, but other than that he looked fine…better than when he'd had that heart attack, that was for certain.

"He's stable now, Mrs. Niles, but still unconscious. When he does wake up, as you know, he won't be able to talk. His vocal chords were singed beyond anything medicine can do."

She nodded, moving forward to get a closer look. The rise and fall of his chest was comforting.

C.C. just felt the tears fall, unable to move, speak or even think, really. The doctor had almost made it out the door when he snapped his fingers, came back in and reached for something on a nearby tray. "He had this clutched in his hand. Took forever to loosen his grip. When I saw what it was, I thought you might want it."

She took the crumpled thing from him and as he walked out the door, she knew what it was without having to smooth it out. It was a picture someone had taken of her and Niles while the two of them were dancing at Max and Fran's wedding.

They looked happy. She knew they did. The photograph was etched in her memory, but how? Finally she smoothed it out and in Niles's unmistakeable scrawl saw the words _Fifth happiest time in my life_.

Clutching it in her hand, she pulled a chair to his bed and perched on the edge.

He would never insult her again.

Her hand found its way along the side of the bed to where his left arm rested beneath a blanket. C.C. wrapped her fingers around it and bowed her head. It seemed that every single word he'd ever spoken to her was rushing into her consciousness at once. Maybe there'd be other ways he could get her but it would never be the same. Worse yet, to lose the ability to speak and to sing…something so integral to what made Niles, Niles, seemed...so wrong. So unjust.

"Niles," she said, swallowing hard. "Niles, I wish you could hear me." Tears spilled out of her eyes. "I wish _I_ could hear you. Just one more time. I would listen so closely that I'd memorize every cadence, every tenor, every nuance of something I've taken for granted ever since we met."

She looked down at his face, fully expecting him to open his eyes, but he didn't.

"I would give anything for you to call me a witch right now," she sniffled. "To hear you tell me that Grandma Yetta got a heap o' good lovin' last night." She rubbed her nose. "To hear you call me a trollop, or better yet…" She smiled and whispered, "A brunette."

She felt his arm twitch and quickly wiped the tears from her face and eyes. "Niles?"

He swallowed hard past the throat that hurt like hell. His mouth opened and closed, then opened again. When he tried to speak, he found that he could not.

She suddenly had the urge to look down to the foot of the bed. His feet were there.

If his feet were there, what about-?

He opened his eyes.

"Niles, can you hear me?" she asked.

He nodded. He had his hearing.

"Niles, can you see me?"

He nodded. He had his eyesight.

"Niles, do your feet feel okay?"

He gave her an odd look as he wiggled his feet and all ten toes, and nodded. He had his feet.

"We've done this already."

At that, he vigorously nodded. "Wait…you…you remember?"

Again, a forceful series of nods.

C.C. chewed on her lower lip for a moment. "You can't talk, can you?"

He shook his head.

Remembering something she'd seen in a documentary, she said, "Blink once for yes and twice for no, okay?"

He blinked once.

"Do you remember the boiler exploding while you were in the basement?"

One blink.

"And there was a fire."

One blink.

"And I rushed from home when I saw it on the news."

He blinked _and_ nodded.

"Because I felt what had happened to you…somehow."

One blink.

"I had to pose as your wife or they wouldn't have told us what was wrong with you."

Blink.

"The first time, you…you were blind."

He blinked, eyes locked on hers.

"Then you were deaf," she saw him blink, " and then you'd lost your feet. And now, you can't speak."

Niles blinked and then waved his left hand in the air, finger pointing as though it were writing.

C.C. looked around but there was nothing in the room he could write with. She fished in her handbag and pulled out a small notebook and pen. She handed him the pen and held the notebook where he could reach it.

_Extinguish Thou my eyes: I still can see Thee_

She stared at the line until he indicated she needed to turn the page. She did so and he wrote again.

_Deprive my ears of sound:I still can hear Thee,_

C.C. gasped and turned the page for him again.

_And without feet I still can come to Thee,_

She read it and turned the page one last time.

_And without voice I still can call to Thee._

"This," C.C. waved her hand between the two of them as she took the pen back from him, "is about us somehow?"

He nodded.

"But…is this a poem?"

He nodded again.

"Is there more to it?"

He held his hand out for the pen as the Sheffields entered the room behind her. Niles reached out to the notepad and wrote two more lines.

_Sever my arms from me, I still will hold Thee  
with all my heart as with a single hand,_

C.C. felt the lump in her throat. "This is what I'm supposed to know," she whispered.

Niles nodded slowly, his gaze not leaving hers. When Fran walked up and took the pen from his hand, he raised that hand to his chest over where his heart was. Then he took the pen back from her as C.C. turned to a blank page.

_Arrest my heart, my brain will keep on beating,_

"Arrest your heart?" C.C. whispered.

"Miss Babcock, you don't _look_ so good," Fran said.

Her eyes widened. "No…no, he's going to have a heart attack!" she cried, dropping the notebook and hitting the Call button next to the bed. "Niles!" she sobbed, placing one hand on each side of his face. "Don't…not again…what do I have to do? What do I have to do to stop this?"

"Miss Babcock-!"

"C.C.!"

"What the _hell-_?"

Niles pulled C.C. to him by the back of her neck so that their lips touched softly. Then his eyes rolled back in his head and somewhere she registered the sound of the flatline.

It was just Brighton's luck that she fell on top of him when she fainted.


	5. Thy Fire

**Chapter 5: Thy Fire**

_And Should Thy fire at last my brain consume,  
the flowing of my blood will carry Thee._

C.C. rose back to the land of the living quickly. She found herself lying in a bed with curtains pulled around her. She recognized the sounds immediately. She was in a hospital. But why? What had happened?

Just like that, it all came flooding back to her, swirling in her mind's eye like a multitude of television moments screaming for her attention to be on each and every one at once.

Empty house

Go home

Duck

Chester

Movie

Sick

Relationship

News flash

Fire Niles

Blind

Pain

Head

Eyes

Ears

Feet

Voice

Poem

Kiss

C.C. tried to jump out of the bed she was in but felt dizzy. She was wearing a hospital gown, but wasn't she supposed to be wearing her street clothes? Struggling against the fuzziness in her mind, she struggled to understand what she was supposed to do this time.

What was it Niles had said?

Not said. He couldn't talk.

"_What do I have to do? What do I have to do to stop this?"_

He'd kissed her.

She frowned so hard it made her face hurt. She dropped her head into her hands. "Think, think, think!" she admonished herself.

Niles had a heart attack…she squelched the urged to throw up.

He was going to die and he _knew_ it.

Going to die…going to die…she'd been at home, this must _all_ have had some _meaning_, but _what_?

Suddenly she had to see a clock. She didn't know why. She struggled out of bed, dragging the mobile IV stand behind her, and whipped back the curtain. Right there, near the nurse's station.

10:00 p.m. on the dot.

10? No, that wasn't the right time. She was home now, she was at home, she wasn't at the hospital this early, that didn't happen until…until when?

She'd watched the movie. When? When had it been on? _An Affair to Remember_, she recalled, trying to visualize the cable TV menu in her mind. "When, when?" she breathed.

8! It had been on from 8 to 10!

10? But it was 10 now, what did that _mean_?

"Calm down, C.C., just calm down." She saw a bag of her clothes on the floor…a garbage bag from the hospital, her shirt was sticking out. She grabbed it, dumped it out on the bed and quickly replaced her gown with the items.

10 o'clock. The movie ended at 10. She got…sick…she got sick! She vomited, Chester was looking at her funny. The news flash. Suddenly she knew…she knew what it was, why this had happened…she just _knew_.

_Niles!_ She cried inside with every fibre of her being. _Niles, I'm coming!_

(=(=(=(=(=(=(=(N-C)=)=)=)=)=)=)=)

C.C. screeched to a halt on 75th Street in front of the Sheffield home.

There were no fire trucks.

There were no flames.

It was just another quiet, normal day.

But the way C.C. moved said otherwise.

She raced to the front door, but found it locked. There was no time. She knew there was no time.

She jumped back into her BMW and screeched down the street, around the corner and into the alley, barely making the turn. She didn't even get it into Park before she was out and yanking at the locked wooden basement double doors.

"Niles!" she hollered, yanking and pulling to no avail. "_Niles!_"

(=(=(=(=(=(=(=(N-C)=)=)=)=)=)=)=)

Flicking on the two light switches at the top of the basement stairs, he cautiously descended step by step, no longer hearing the sound, but wary all the same. He hadn't been down here in some time, and he could tell by the amount of dust on everything in sight.

Between Fran's past, Maxwell's past, and the children's pasts, there were so many boxes down here he'd lost count of them ages ago. Things that none of them could part with, but that never saw the light of day. Suddenly he thought of the one box that was his; mingled in with all the rest, it held memories near and dear to his heart, few though they were.

Forgetting what had brought him to the basement to begin with, Niles moved closer to the boiler and deftly removed three boxes, behind which were two more rows of neatly stacked ones. From those he pulled one out from under another. It was plain brown cardboard and not labelled. This was his.

He pulled a footstool over, sat down and placed his box on the floor. Opening it, he pulled a picture out and was suddenly scared out of his wits when someone banged the wooden basement double doors so hard he thought for sure they'd broken in.

"What the _devil_?" he asked of no one as he rose to his feet.

"Niles!" he heard her holler as she yanked and pulled to no avail. "_Niles!_"

Suddenly he got a funny look in his eyes and his mouth created the ghost of a smile. "She made it," he whispered. "At last."

And then like a shot he was at the doors unlocking their three deadbolts and throwing them open so fast her knocked her back on her rump.

"Niles!"

"_Go!_" he cried, grabbing her hand and pulling her so hard she thought for sure her shoulder had been disclocated.

But she firmly grasped his hand in return as he pulled her to her feet, only to hear a high-pitched squeal and feel something slam into her so hard it knocked her across the alley into a fence.

As her eyes fluttered closed, she felt his body atop hers and for a moment, forced her lids back open. Blue eyes met blue eyes, and in that instant, she knew they'd beat it.

Nobody realized at first that there was anything in the alley to look at. First responders, the Sheffields, the paramedics; they all were working on things from the front because the fire trucks couldn't _get_ into the alley.

That was, until a silver BMW rolled backwards and driverless onto 75th…nearly knocking a curious Brighton over in the process. "Hey!" he yelped. Then he squinted at the vehicle. "That's—hey, Dad, Fran! That's Miss _Babcock's_ BMW!"

All five of them ran down the alley. It was Fran who saw the two slumped figures first. "Oh, my _God_, B, quick, run get the firemen!"

Brighton turned on heel and raced back to the front of the townhouse while the remaining four crouched and knelt near the victims.

"Niles, old boy, come on, wake up," Max said, shaking him lightly.

"Yah, you're crushing Miss Babcock over here," Fran said, trying to pull at Niles's arm.

"Do you think they were _in there_ when it started?" Maggie asked, noticing the wide-open basement doors.

"If they were, they might be hurt!" Grace observed, laying a hand on Niles's leg.

"Well, they're both breathing, and here come the paramedics now," Maxwell said, gathering his family and gently moving them off to the side.

"They look all right," Brighton commented as the medics went to work.

"Well, other than the fact that they're _unconscious_, yeah," Maggie retorted.

"They're going to be okay," Maxwell breathed, closing his eyes for a moment.

"Honey?" Fran said, placing a hand on his chest and giving him a curious look. "How do you know that?"

"I'm not sure, darling," he replied, taking her hand in his. "I just feel as though we've been down this road before, only…this time, it's going to be okay."

Maggie, never taking her wide eyes from her father's face, leaned down and whispered in Grace's ear, "I think you'd better make an appointment with Dr. Bort." Off her sister's questioning look, she continued, "For Dad."

(=(=(=(=(=(=(=(N-C)=)=)=)=)=)=)=)

C.C. rose back to the land of the living quickly. She found herself lying in a bed with curtains pulled around her. She recognized the sounds immediately. She was in a hospital.

"Niles!" she cried, jumping out of her bed.

Street clothes? Check.

"Here!"

"Wha-?"

He'd answered her!

"Where?" she cried, throwing back the curtain.

The bay next to hers had its curtains drawn and she used both hands to fling them open, only to quickly cover her eyes as an elderly woman screamed bloody murder. "_Sorry_!"

She heard a laugh that it seemed as though it'd been _too_ long since she'd heard. Turning a little pink from embarrassment, she pivoted and saw him standing there leaning against the nurse's station counter in a pair of jeans and blue polo, looking very casual and _very_ amused.

C.C. couldn't be mad, as hard as she tried. Because there he was, one hundred percent intact and smiling at her, to boot!

There were his feet…she felt the lump form in her throat…

…his laugh had already told her he had his voice. She thought of that torturous moment when she knew she'd never hear that beautiful baritone again…

…the fact that he'd answered her told her he could hear. And the way he was looking at her told her he could most _definitely_ see.

"Are you ready to go home, Miss Babcock?" he asked as a nurse hurried over with her discharge papers.

"Niles, what-?" A tear slipped from her eye.

"Shhh," he said softly, placing a finger over her lips. "Just sign that thing so we can go."

She nodded and did as requested, and before she knew it, was being greeted, hugged and otherwise mauled by five Sheffields and at least twice as many Fines.

(=(=(=(=(=(=(=(N-C)=)=)=)=)=)=)=)

It was already nearing dawn, and what with the frenzy of activity that was necessary to find out how Niles and C.C. were, what had happened, and about a thousand cries of "It's a miracle!," it did indeed seem to be a miracle when C.C. and Niles found themselves alone at last in the lobby of the Central Park Ritz-Carlton.

"I'm exhausted," C.C. proclaimed unnecessarily.

"Mmhmm," was Niles' tired response.

"Listen, I…Niles, we…" she bit her lip uncertainly.

"I know. Well, I have an idea, but only if you're agreeable."

C.C. snorted, "When have you ever known me to be agreeable?"

"You have a point."

She grinned. "What's the idea?"

"I believe you want to know what's happened, and we're certainly not going to be able to discuss it in one of the Sheffields' rooms."

She shook her head. "Nope." Then she caught his meaning. "Come on, Alfred," she said, grasping his hand tightly. "Let's go to my place."

It was with no small amount of surprise and a large smile that he willingly allowed himself to be led.

(=(=(=(=(=(=(=(N-C)=)=)=)=)=)=)=)

They had barely made it in the door when Chester flew into Niles's arms, yapping excitedly and planting wet, sloppy kisses all over his face. "Now, why do you suppose he likes me so much?" Niles wondered aloud.

"That's simple," C.C. replied, her voice deep. "Dogs know their own kind."

Niles laughed out loud, a rich, hearty sound that C.C. had never heard from him before. She turned in wonder, grinning like a kid at Christmas. "Do that again."

"Do what again?"

Her face fell. "Laugh. I didn't think I'd ever hear that sound from you."

His face became serious as he put Chester back down on the floor. "Miss Babcock," Niles said, leading her over to the couch. "Come sit with me."

"You have to tell me what's going on, Niles," she said quietly, remembering the TV news flash. But…had it all been real? "You know, I know you do."

"Yes, I know. I figured it out after the second round."

"Second round?"

"Losing my hearing. It's amazing how much thinking you can do when you can't hear and your eyes are so gummed up you can't see."

"So…we experienced this…" She waved her hand in the air. "This…_thing_…together."

"I believe so. From what you said, and from the feelings I kept getting as each time would start again."

"And what was the point, exactly?" she asked so quietly he almost didn't hear.

"Well," he said, leaning back and stretching his legs out in front of him, "I think there was more than one point, first and foremost being that you save me from any of those horrible fates." He grinned impishly and leaned forward. "I really didn't think you had it in you, you know."

"Had what in me?"

"Being a hero."

She nodded and snorted in agreement. "I'm not a hero, Niles. I was led to do that. Was it by you?"

"I have no idea," he admitted. "I could hear you, sometimes. And then other times just…"

He blushed. It was the most adorable thing C.C. had ever seen besides Chester. She scooted closer to him and laid a tentative hand on his arm. "Other times what?" she prodded gently.

"Other times, it was as though I were _feeling_ you. I couldn't see, I couldn't hear, I couldn't speak, I couldn't move. And yet, each time, I knew somehow I was connecting with you."

"Yes, I know," she replied, lost in thought. "I felt your pain, Niles. Each time I felt your arm burn. I felt the heat of the fire." She took a deep breath. "I felt the pain from shrapnel hitting your head. I felt it when the main floor collapsed on your feet."

He looked strangely at her. "Miss Babcock, you're trembling," he said, taking her hands in his.

"It was so _strong_, Niles. So strong!"

"Yes."

"And there was the photo. It showed up in every one of these…these…experiences."

Now Niles went positively crimson.

"It exists, doesn't it? That photo?"

He nodded and reached around to his back pocket. Shortly he produced the photograph in question…only this time it wasn't crumpled. To C.C.'s amazement, he lifted it to his lips and kissed it before handing it to her.

"Niles, you...why did you do that?"

He was still red as a beet. "That's what I do every time I take it out," he replied sheepishly.

Half her mouth turned upwards in a smile. She had always raised the tight fist, the one mimicking Niles' hand holding the crumpled photo, to her mouth just before she lost consciousness. Caressing the picture for a moment first, C.C. then turned it over. Niles' handwriting was there, as usual. Only this time it said…

"The sixth happiest time in my life." She looked up at him. "Why was it always second, third, fourth…and now sixth?" she asked. "There was never a first."

"Oh, yes, there was," he replied. "But that's another story altogether."

"Still, that doesn't make sense. If this was taken at Maxwell's wedding, and you had already placed it inside a box that had enough time to gather dust, then you would have to have written this on the back well before what happened tonight."

Niles shrugged and spread his hands to the heavens. "I don't really know how or why that changed. I haven't figured that out yet."

C.C. slid back until she was resting against the back of the couch. Her left shoulder was even with Niles's right. "So you said you thought the main point was for me to save you before the boiler exploded."

"Yes, it would seem so."

"Niles, that last time, when you had no voice…you…you wrote a poem. A poem that seemed to align with exactly what happened to us."

"Yes. Rainer Maria Rilke. I adore his poetry, I have a large collection of it. This particular poem is one my mother used to recite to me as a child, by way of reassuring me that no matter what happened in life, no matter how long she lived or how soon she died, she would always be there for me."

C.C. jumped up and dashed to where she'd dropped her handbag on the bar. She fished inside of it for a moment and produced the very notebook Niles had written in. But to her dismay, the pages were blank. He hadn't written it down at all.

"Extinguish Thou my eyes: I still can see Thee," Niles began, rising from the couch and crossing to meet her near the front door. She froze, reveling in the sound of his voice that, for once, was sharing something with her other than indignities.

"Deprive my ears of sound: I still can hear Thee," he continued. And there he was, standing at his full height in front of her. She couldn't bring her eyes to meet his.

"And without feet I still can come to Thee." He smiled as she dropped the notebook to the floor.

"And without voice I still can call to Thee."

"Yes," she whispered.

He reached out and placed his index finger under her chin. Gently he turned her eyes to his. "C.C.," he said softly. "You're trembling again."

She swallowed hard.

"Sever my arms from me, I still will hold Thee with all my heart as with a single hand." He pulled her to him, encircling her with his arms. She let go a muffled sob into the fabric of his shirt. It felt so right. So right.

"Arrest my heart, my brain will keep on beating." He delicately kissed the top of her head, then moved his head and chest back an inch, causing her to look up at him.

Her lips were full, her eyes brimming with tears. She knew without a doubt that this was the second point. The other reason for whatever it was that had happened to them.

He saw the realization in her eyes and, trembling just a bit himself, took that as his cue to continue. "And Should Thy fire at last my brain consume," he breathed, moving his face down to hers, "the flowing of my blood will carry Thee."

Before she could take another breath, he kissed her. Gently, softly, but thoroughly.

They parted and she reached a hand up to touch the spot right between his eyebrows at the top of his nose. "You're here," she whispered. "I won't wake up from this."

"It's real, C.C. This," he replied, leaning in to brush his lips across hers, "is more real than I ever dared hope."

"You want my fire to consume you?"

He grinned boyishly. "That happened long ago."

She blushed. "I know. I just didn't…know." C.C. looked up at him. "Until now."

"I wonder who we thank for this?" Niles asked, rubbing his nose against hers.

She giggled at the sensation. "I don't know, but I will be thanking them…for the rest of my life."

"As will I, C.C." He pulled her body tightly to his, looked toward the heavens and blinked back the tears. "As will I."

_**Extinguish Thou My Eyes**_

_**Rainer Maria Rilke**_

_Extinguish Thou my eyes: I still can see Thee,_

_deprive my ears of sound: I still can hear Thee,_

_and without feet I still can come to Thee,_

_and without voice I still can call to Thee._

_Sever my arms from me, I still will hold Thee_

_with all my heart as with a single hand,_

_arrest my heart, my brain will keep on beating,_

_and Should Thy fire at last my brain consume,_

_the flowing of my blood will carry Thee._


	6. Epilogue

**Chapter 6 – Epilogue**

Maxwell was jarred awake in the middle of the night by none other than his pregnant wife. Sleepily he swung his feet out of bed, blindly grabbing for his bathrobe and automatically toeing his slippers on.

"What is it tonight, Fran, pickles? Ben & Jerry?"

"No, no, Max, it's—wait, that sounds really good, can I get them in the same bowl?"

He made a face but mumbled, "Coming right up, sweetheart."

"No, no, wait, that's not why I woke you! It's B, I think he's having a nightmare!"

"What?" Max asked, wide awake now. "A nightmare? At _his_ age?"

The two stole down the hall to Brighton's door. "Here, listen," she whispered, pulling his ear close to it.

Sure enough, they could hear Brighton saying, "No, no, not again!" and then it sounded like he'd been sucker punched.

That was enough for this father, who threw the door open. Brighton was tangled in his bedcovers, thrashing around violently. Fran rushed to the bed.

"B, honey, wake up, wake up!"

"Huh-wha?" Brighton sat bolt upright and his hands automatically went up in front of his face. "No, don't!" he cried.

Maxwell was soon seated at his son's side. "Brighton, what's the matter?"

"I—" The young man looked around and sighed audibly. "Thank _God_ she's not here."

Fran and Max exchanged looks before she turned back to him, rubbing his arm. "Aww, who's not here, honey?"

"C.C."

"C.C.?" Max repeated. "Why on Earth are you having a nightmare about C.C.?"

They waited, but Niles wasn't around so there was no quick witted answer forthcoming. Fran sighed, "God, when he's not here, I miss that man."

"Who, C.C.?" Max asked innocently.

"Noooo, _Niles_!" she replied, slapping him on the arm. "Now Brighton," she said in all seriousness, "tell us why you were dreaming about Miss Babcock."

"I'm not really sure, Fran. I've just had this recurring nightmare ever since she and Niles almost got blown up."

"Well, what happens in this nightmare?" Max asked.

Brighton shrugged. "I can't ever remember, really. All I know is that I have an irrational fear of that woman falling on me."

_The End_


End file.
